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NINE YEARS IN NIPON. 





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NINE YEARS IN NIPON 



SKETCHES OF JAPANESE LIFE 
AND MANNERS 



BY 



HENRY FAULDS, L.F.P.S. 

Surgeon of Tsukiji Hospital, Tokio ; Member of the Royal Asiatic Society 




Boston 
CUPPLES & HURD, 94 BOYLSTON STREET 



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TO MY FATHER 
THIS WORK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 



PREFACE 



So many works have of late been written on Japan that 
perhaps the best apology for publishing a new one is that 
the public seem to wish for more. 

My aim has been to give in language as free as 
possible from pedantic jargon such an account of Nipon 
and its people as may instruct, without unduly boring 
my readers. A great deal more might have been written 
than I have here attempted, but fortunately strict limits 
were imposed upon me, and I sincerely hope that useful 
and interesting things only have found admission. 

I have been obliged to omit, most reluctantly, a large 
section in which I intended to give some account of the 
religious and moral systems which prevail in Japan, but, 
should this work succeed in finding a moderate measure 
of public approbation, I hope soon to expand my notes 
on these subjects into a separate volume. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. — Introductory. 

The Land — Its Contour — The Four Great Islands — Inland Sea — 
Rivers and Canals — Coast — Lighthouses — Harbours — The Black 
Stream — Climate — Flora and Fauna — Races, .... 9 

CHAPTER II. — First Impressions of Yokohama. 

Tropical Fruits and Icy Decks — An Economical Lighthouse — ^Japanese 
Horror of Paint — Human Vultures — Yokohama and Its People — 
A Mushroom Settlement — Bird's-eye View — No Loafers — Human 
Hansoms — Building Stone — Straw Clothing — Tribute to "Toot- 
sicums " — A Motley Crowd, 25 

CHAPTER III.— A Run on the Tokio Railway. 

Granny and the Engine — A Solid Road — Lady Smokers — Paddy Fields 
and Egrets — Fuji, the Peerless Mountain — A Clerical Cyclist — 
Quiet Resting Places — An Unpicturesque Metropolis — Silent 
Streets — Musical Groans, ....-.-. 37 

CHAPTER IV.— Street Scenes. 

Shadow Pictures — Street Names — Esthetic Mud-pies — Kite Flying — 
A Hint for Arctic Explorers — Fishy Conduct of an English 
Professor — The Queen's English — A Japanese Crowd — A Baby 
Cook Shop, --. .- 46 

CHAPTER v.— Life in Tokio. 

New Friends — Sir Harry Parkes — Mine Inn and its Master — A Hyper- 
Calvinistic Parrot — Plague of Frogs and Students — New Mode of 
"Running a Restaurant" — The "Great Workman" and his 
Little Ways — Charm against Leaks — Pic-nic and Fireworks — A 
New Mode of Signalling — Charm for Finding Drowned Bodies — 
A Japanese Tower of Siloam — Christmas in the Far East, - - 62 

CHAPTER VI. — A Consultation in the Hills. 

A Rembrandtesque Scene — Novel Style of Drag — Daybreak on the 
Plains — A Remorseful Knight — Wayside Tea-houses — A For- 
midable Ferry — Buddha in Bronze — Presbyterian Church in the 
Hills — Dining in Public — A Doctor of the Old School — Scotch 
Service amongst Silk — Utility of Yawning, .... 76 

CHAPTER VII. — A Consultation in the Hills {Continued), 

A Charming Bedroom — Landscape Gardening in Miniature — Duck's 
Eggs and Duty — Some World-forgotten Ones — Doctors sometinies 
differ — A Hint for Pious Busy-bodies — Religious Radishes — 
Tincture of Snake— Rays of Buddha— Midnight in a Forest— 
"Resources of Civilization" — A Suspicious Case — Ho^^y versus 
Timidity— Loving the Darkness, 86 



X. 



Contents. 



CHAPTER VIIL— MiTAKE San— The Sacred Mount of 
THE Three Peaks. 

Bad Roads and Better Language — Spiders and Beetles — A Japanese 
Scarecrow — Night Storm in a Forest — A Dispirited Coolie — 
Sunday Quiet and Questioning — Buddhist Teaching and Modern 
Science — Passports and Preaching — A Picturesque School — Sick 
Cicadas — Art and Nature — Brambles and Barefeet, ... 94 

CHAPTER IX. — Pilgrimage to Fugi the Peerless. 

A Village Festival — Butterflies and Cicadas — A Noisy Inn — River Scene 
— Silk — Dining on Hot Water — Mimicry in Spiders — A Mountain 
Pass — Tea and Tattle — A Tragic Pool — Dissolving Views — 
Spindle Whorl — An Exciting and Ludicrous Scene — Limbs of the 
Law — Curious Bridge — Pious Parishioners and a Prudent Rector, 107 

CHAPTER X. — Pilgrimage to Fugi the Peerless ( G?;^//;/?^^^). 

Pretty Tree Frogs — Ancient Trees — Buddha-faced Woman — Peep into 
a Village School — Ai Fish — Sweet Scenery — Awe Inspiring Walk 
—Lava "Froth" and its Use— Mild Martyrdom— A Heavenly 
Vision — Mountain Lake — Volcanic Prairie Flowers — An Esthetic 
Jinrikisha Man— A Statuesque Stoat — Novel Tail-piece— Patriotic 
Bias — Fans versus Flies, - - - - - - - - I2I 

CHAPTER XI.— In a Cottage by the Sea. 

A Fair Breeze and Holiday Aspirations — Voyage of Discovery — Crabs 
and Canal Banks— A Marine Tunnel-borer — Snakes and Frogs — 
Stone Net-sinkers— Koi Fish— A Lovely Marvel of the Sea— A 
Dying Cuttle-fish, 136 

CHAPTER XII. — Trip to the Tomb of Iyeyasu. 

Unpromising Start — Bridge of Japan — Suburbs of Tokio — An Amorous 
Ascetic — Flowering Palm Trees — A Brazen Serpent — Hotel Gossip 
and Pagan Devotions— Wonderful Avenue — Primitive Ploughs — 
Weeping Cherry Tree — A Quiet Priest and His Garden — Shrines 
and Saints — Uncountable Buddhas and Nature's Cynicism, - 147 

CHAPTER XIII. — Nagasaki and the. Inland Sea. 

Yedo Bay — Matsuwa's Sacrifice — Rapid Currents— Fair Islands — 
Atmospheric Effects — A Tight Fit — Shimonoseki — The Resources 
of Christian Civilization — A Big Indemnity — Grand Sea Scene 
and Mai de Af^r— Nagasaki Harbour — Papenberg — Story of the 
Martyrs — Chinese Money Changers — Tortoise-shell Work — 
Schools and Missions, 164 

CHAPTER XIV. — Ten Days on the Tokaido. 

On the Osaka Railway— Cold Water Cure for Sin— A Kaleidoscopic 
Cook— Hints for Travellers— Glimpses of Kioto, the Old Capital 
—Buddhists and their Bells— A Lantern-lit City and a Star-lit 
Hedge Salamanders and Singing Frogs— Snake-baskets and 
River-banks— On the Tokaido— Hakone Pass — A Volcanic Cup 
and some of its contents, I73 



Contents. xi 

CHAPTER XV. — Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. 

Simplicity of Japanese Bouquets — Artless Art — A Floral Calendar — 
Flower and Tree Markets — Fruitless Sprays of Blossom — Place of 
Honour and its Decoration — Allusive Obscurity — "Heaven, Earth 
and Man" — Symbolism in Flowers — Art Training of the People, 190 

CHAPTER XVL— The Language of Nipon. 

A Japanese Writer's Lamentation — Some Common Misconceptions — 
Pijin English and its Uses — The Lingua Franca of the Far 
East — A Big Alphabet — Chinese Tones — Iconographs or Picture- 
Words — No Declensions, Conjugations, nor Pronouns — Imper- 
fection of the Colloquial — Need of Linguistic Development — 
Capacity for Combinations — Suspected Sanskrit Affinities — 
Etiquette and Honorifics — Future of the Colloquial Language, - 201 

CHAPTER XVIL— Schools. 

General Diffusion of Education in Japan — Educational Influence of 
Buddhism — Statistics — Duration of School Period — Genuine 
Accomplishments — Heroes of the School — Pens, Ink, and Paper 
— Introduction of Arabic Numerals— A Japanese Writer on Girls' 
Schools, 20S 

CHAPTER XVin. — A Glimpse of the Land of Neglected 
Education. 

The Carlyle and Thackeray of Japan — Bakin's Idea of the Genuine 
Gentleman — Geography of the Land — The Natives and their 
Strange Ways — Bad Schoolboys in Japan — Apprenticeship — 
Coddling and its Consequences — A Family Scene — Breaking the 
Indentures — On the Streets — Moral, 217 I 



I 



CHAPTER XIX.— My Garden and its Guests. 

A Dull Look-out — From Chaos to Cosmos — Shower of Frogs (?) — A 
Rare Hedge of Roses — How the Japanese treat Sick Trees — 
Painters and Pine-trees — Pine-boring Insect — Some Curious 
Spiders — A Fable fresh from Nature — Ants and Aphides — An 
Entomological Pharisee^Nest of the Mantis — Sons of the Prophets 
— A Flight of Dragon-flies — Moles and Worms — Curious Super- 
stition — Committee Fever and Dame Nature's Soothing Syrup, - 22^ 

CHAPTER XX. — Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. 

Absence of Degraded Conventionalism — An Exception Proving the 
Rule— Outlines of Fuji — The Bamboo in Art — Simplicity in Com- 
position — Flight of Birds — Spider's Web in Wood- work — Want of 
Truth in Greek Art — A Japanese Picture Gallery, - - - 238 

CHAPTER XXL — The Philosophy of Heaven and Earth 

in a Nut-shell. 

Why Some Birds Fly Well and Others Badly — Guesses at Protective 
Imitation — A New Version of the Sphynx — Analogies of Nature 
and Man — Casting Away of Passion — The True Gentleman — The 
Eight Virtues — Some Wise Sayings, ------ 250 



xii. Contents. 

CHAPTER XXII.— Homes of the People. 

Moated Castles in Miniature — Bird Rest or Torii — Grim Gateways — 
Keeping the Wolf from the Door — Primitive Stairways — Pebbled 
Courtyard — Hara-kiri, or the " Happy Despatch " — Wells and 
Water — A Poet and the " Morning Glory" — Paper Lanterns, 
Pillows, etc. — Mosquito Nets — Rats and Cats — The End of the 
Home— "Fire!" 257 

CHAPTER XXIII. — How the Japanese Amuse Themselves. 

Artistic Toys — Cheapness, a Hygienic Advantage — Gardening in 
Miniature — Archaisms of the Toy World — Tough Picture-Books 
— Early Kinder Gartens — Dumb Oratory — Puppet Shows and the 
the Drama — Wrestlers and their Rewards, - - - - 271 

CHAPTER XXIV. — Japanese Manners and Customs — 
Negative and Positive. 
Degraded Religions — Origin of some Fetishes — Superstitious Customs, 280 

CHAPTER XXV.— General Survey : What I Think of 
Japan. 

Growth of Population — Promise of Improved Physique — "Bafe" Tea 
and Blankets — A Reasonable People — Over-Legislation about 
Shipping — Usurpation of the Shoguns — Growth of the Daimiates 
— Questionings — Japanese Whigs and Tories — D.read of Socialism 
— The Clan Unit — Moral Progress — Revisal of Treaties, - - 291 



NINE YEARS IN NIPON. 



CHAPTER I 

Introductory. 



The Land — Its Contour — The Four Great Islands — Inland Sea — Rivers amd 
Canals — Coast — Lighthouses — Harbours — The Black Stream — Climate 
— Flora and Fatina — Races. 



fl 



APAN is the name usually given by English 
writers to a fertile and populous group of four 
great islands associated with a number of smaller 
ones, which lies in the far East almost where 
our artificial day begins, and whose people 
may perhaps therefore, not unreasonably, 
hope to form a natural link between those 
^^ of East and West. Its area is rather 
'^ greater than that of the United Kingdom, 
and may be about 1 50,000 square miles, much of which 
still lies waste and uncultivated, though apparently 
capable of tillage. About one-fourth is forest land. 
Japan is washed on the east by the sluggish rollers of the 
Pacific, and on the west by the seas of Japan and 



lO Nine Years in Nipon. 

Okhotsk. The most westerly point is within an hour 
or two's sail of the Asiatic continent, and eastwards 
it is about 5000 miles distant from San Francisco. 
Comprising the crescent-shaped mainland, or largest 
island, which is not definitely named like the others — 
Kiushiu, Shikoku, Yesso, the Kurile Islands, and many 
others— it lies stretched from 24° to 50° 40' N. lat, and 
from 124° to 156° 38' E. long,— that is, speaking roughly, 
it lies diagonally in, and north of, the sub-tropical belt, 
and has northern points corresponding with Paris and 
Newfoundland on the one hand and southern ones placed 
like Cairo, Madeira, and the Bermudas ; or again, it cor- 
responds pretty nearly in latitude with the eastern coast 
line of the United States, adding Nova Scotia and New- 
foundland ; and the contrasts of climate in the latter 
island and in Florida are probably not more remarkable 
than those which are observed in the extreme northern 
and southern regions of Japan. 

By the almost U-shaped Suez canal route the distance 
is nearly 1 2,000 miles from Liverpool, but by the slightly 
arched San Francisco route the distance is greatly 
lessened, much of it being practically still further 
shortened by railway so that the journey can be accom- 
plished in a month. 

The general shape of the mass formed by the four great 
islands, which lie closely together separated only by the 
narrowest straits, has often been poetically compared by 
native writers to the curved form of a dragon-fly in flight. 
Perhaps to the common-place mind of the western bar- 
barian it may suggest the less romantic idea of a hen's 
foot with partly outstretched claws ! 



Introdtictory 



I r 



SEA OF 
J A PA N 




The four islands are — 

1. KlUSHlU (''the nine counties"), of an irregular 
double-wedge shape ; its obtuse wedge lying to the north 
and the acuter one to the south, the mass being placed 
nearly at right angles to the so-called mainland. The 
Bungo Nada, a dangerous strait opening from the Inland 
Sea into the Pacific, separates it from the next, or 

2. Shikoku (" the four provinces "), an irregular cres- 
cent lying southward from and parallel to the western 
part of the " mainland," having its concavity turned south- 
ward to the Pacific, while its convexity forms the southern 
boundary of the Inland Sea. 

3. The (strictly-speaking) unnamed HONDO, or HON- 
SHIU, or mainland is considerably larger than the other 
three islands combined. It is almost divided into two 



12 Nine Years in Nipon. 

portions by the large fresh water Lake Biwa and two cor- 
responding deep indentations on the north and south 
coasts respectively, or the bays of Wakasa and Owari. 
The western or smaller portion lying east-west is some- 
thing like a human foot with its toes pointing westward, 
the hollow of the arch forming the north boundary of the 
Inland Sea. The remaining portion is somewhat like an 
inverted axe, its handle pointing due north and the blade 
touching the western portion just described. 

4. Yesso, the northernmost island, lies close to the 
mainland, being separated from it by Tsugaru strait, which 
can be crossed in an hour or so. It bears no very fanciful 
resemblance to a gigantic ray fish, steering eastward, with 
contorted tail pointing to the mainland. 

The chain of smaller islands trends from S.W., by N.E., 
forming a broken sinuous line with Saghalien — no longer 
politically a part of Japan — and the Aleutian islands. 

Saghalien was a possession of some value, and in 1875 
was ceded to Russia in return for the comparatively worth- 
less Kurile islands, where sea-otters are obtained. The 
act of cession was very unpopular in Japan. The island 
is said now to contain about 4000 exiles chiefly of the 
male sex. They are sent by sea from Odessa, and the 
fatality on the way has been great. 

The Japanese government seem to have a fairly good 
claim to the small but interesting group of Loochoo 
(Liu-chiu) islands, but it is hotly contested by China. 
The people have more natural affinity in language and 
customs to Japan than to China, and would be more 
benefited by control from Tokio than from Pekin. 



Introductory. 1 3 

The Bonins, called Ogasawara, were recently ceded by the 
British to Japan. 

The most striking geographical feature of Japan is the 
Inland Sea, which is certainly one of the beauties of the 
world. It is a long irregularly-shaped arm of the sea, 
with tides and rapid currents, of variable width and no 
great depth, studded with innumerable thickly-wooded 
islands. It may be entered from the Pacific by two straits, 
— Linschoten strait and Bungo nada, the navigation of 
the latter in certain seasons being especially dangerous 
and difficult. On the northern side the Inland Sea is 
entered from the Sea of Japan through the strait of 
Shimonoseki, which very greatly resembles the Kyles of 
Bute in its narrow sinuous passage and surrounding 
scenery of most romantic beauty. This is practically the 
shortest way from Yokohama to Nagasaki, Mr. Griffis to 
the contrary notwithstanding, and is the route now taken 
by the mail steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental 
Steamship Company. This little question, however, led, 
in 1864, to much bloodshed and subsequent diplomacy, of 
which I shall have something to say in another chapter. 

The crescent of the narrow mainland, if the largest of 
the islands may be so called, presents its convex side to 
the Pacific Ocean, while the concavity is turned towards 
the sea of Japan and the newly opened kingdom of Corea. 
It is pretty clearly divided into somewhat irregular 
north-western and south-eastern slopes, with well-marked 
climatic differences, by a grand central range of great 
height, broken here and there by the strongly marked 
individuality of a still living, or but recently extinct, vol- 
cano, the whole forming a rough back-bone flanked with 



14 Nine Years in Nipon. 

many spur-like ranges, water-carved, and often beautifully 
terraced along the river valleys, but nowhere, so far as has 
yet been observed, showing any direct effects of glacial 
action. 

The Central main line of railway is intended to run 
along the flanks of this rugged crest, far enough inland 
to be safe from attack by sea or destruction by flooding 
of the rivers, whose shifting beds form no very good 
formation for the long viaducts which would be required 
in another situation. Most of the larger rivers in the main- 
land curiously run a course tending almost north or 
south. The general contour of the land — its great narrow- 
ness — is such, indeed, that they must needs be short, but 
this direction gives them the greatest length possible. There 
are brief periods of excessively heavy rain, and so they are 
often then in fierce flood, carrying everything before them 
and leaving great plains of water-worn stones and gravel 
around their mouths, on which, after a time, soil has 
sometimes accumulated and great forests have grown. 
From their extreme shortness of course the chief commer- 
cial cities of Japan, even when placed on the banks of 
broad rivers, are always near enough to " taste the salt 
breath of the great wide sea." 

The geological structure of many of the rocks has also 
been favourable to the formation of numerous most pic- 
turesque waterfalls, which attract the traveller and have 
from ancient times been warmly admired and eulogised 
by native artists and poets. The rivers at a short distance 
from their outlets are rendered navigable chiefly by the 
courage, enterprise, and ingenuity of the boatmen, who 
are amongst the most daring and skilful in the world. 



Introductory. 1 5 

Till recently little has been done to deepen river chan- 
nels or protect their banks except in the interest of agri- 
culture. In the lower reaches where broad alluvial plains 
of great fertility have been formed they are frequently 
intersected by numerous shallow canals for the most part 
of comparatively recent excavation, but some of them 
are many centuries old, and these, in the general absence 
of good roads, have been of immense service in keeping 
up cross communication throughout the country. 

The detritus brought down by the heavy rains is, in 
some parts of the country, enormous, and is the result of 
the rapid weathering of certain exposed and easily disin- 
tegrated rocks. Those are nearly devoid of vegetation, and 
masses may be seen peeling off and visibly crumbling into 
dust. The beds of the rivers and the bordering tracts on 
each side in thoseregions have thus sometimes actually been 
raised above the average level of the surrounding country, 
and in crossing the bed of the river you have to climb up 
an embankment which has often been strengthened arti- 
ficially by means of long " snake baskets " of bamboo, 
afterwards to be described. 

Such levees^ as geologists call them, are not unknown 
in other countries. They have been described to me by 
travellers as being common in the north of China, and 
there are examples in Italy and in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi. 

One or two of the rivers of Japan, such as the Sumida 
— on the banks of which Tokio, the capital, lies, and 
which is almost as broad as the Thames at Westminster — 
are worthy of note, and at the present day many a fair 
modern craft on Western lines may be seen, under the 



1 6 Nine Years in Nipon. 

cheerful tap of hammers, taking shape on their banks. 
Here it may be mentioned that any particular appelation 
given to a river in Japan holds good only for a limited 
part of its course, so that it changes its name perhaps 
four or five times from its birth amongst the cloud-capped, 
pine-shaded mountains to its final nirvana in the ocean. 
For example, the river which passes through the city of 
Osaka changes its name four times within the city limits! 

The wide bays along the south-eastern coast are for the 
most part shallow, and a very slight elevation of the land 
would vastly increase the areas of the bordering plains, 
which are already very extensive. Such elevations have 
already notably taken place, as is shown by the presence 
of naturally deposited strata of recent sea-shells far above 
high water mark, while there are reliable indications that 
considerable elevation of the land has taken place even 
Vv'ithin the historic period. 

In spite of their shallowness and rapid silting, some of 
the rivers of Japan are capable of being so improved as 
to admit of the passage of steam vessels of the largest 
size, and there are fine natural inlets and one or two 
spacious bays, which form natural harbours of great 
excellence. 

To the wants of a large and progressive society, which 
nature has thus shown her readiness to favour, the Japan- 
ese Government are every year becoming more and more 
alive. What is still more promising, the people them- 
selves, greatly more active than their neighbours in China, 
show a laudable desire to initiate and carry out such local 
improvements as may promise to secure the fullest advan- 
tage to the community from nature's lavish gifts. 



Introductory. 1 7 

One of the most interesting and characteristic features 
of the Industrial Exhibition held in Tokio, in 1882, was 
the splendid display of local maps and models illustrative 
of achieved or proposed undertakings in engineering, 
such as embankments, canals, breakwaters, etc. Many of 
them were of real value, showed scientific insight as to the 
economical application of ways and means, and were, as 
might have been expected, very attractive merely as works 
of art. 

Owing to geologically recent elevations of land 
the coast is usually steep and even precipitous. Its 
chief natural features, such as sunken rocks, capes, 
straits, entrances to bays and harbours, and the mouths of 
rivers, are now well-marked out with beacons, lights or 
lighthouses of modern construction. Some of the latter 
are of superior merit, and speak eloquently to the 
approaching mariner of the progress made in the country 
since the recent Restoration. I sincerely hope, in the 
interests of science, that the lighthouse keepers may be 
encouraged to use the good opportunity they enjoy of 
observing and recording the flight of birds during their 
periods of migration ; while they might also, as has been 
proposed, assist in forming a cordon of meteorological 
observers which might give valuable warnings to fisher- 
men and sailors of coming typhoons. 

The government surveyors seem to have followed our 
own charts for the coastline to begin with, and they are 
proceeding rapidly and carefully to fill in all needful 
details as to the interior. At Yokoska, in Yedo Bay, 
where the chief docks are, the coast tide is said only to 



1 8 Nine Years in Nipon. 

rise about four feet on an average. In spring tides it 
rarely exceeds six feet, and in general the height of the 
flood-tide is never very great. 

In no mere Tennysonian dream, it may be said — 

". . . The mist is drawn 
A lucid veil from coast to coast." 

This renders navigation in summer dangerous and diffi- 
cult, and fogs are deemed by experienced sailors to be the 
great scourge of Japan. Indeed, those malarious cloud- 
banks, laden with infectious germs, as they can almost now 
be proved to be, are probably as dangerous to the landsman 
as to the mariner. While the large area of land lying 
under shallow water during rice cultivation may have 
some share in the formation of those dangerous mists, we 
must seek for a wider and more general cause, and that is 
readily to be found in the great current (or rather currents) 
of warm water passing into a colder sea, which is called 
the Kiu'o sJiiwo, or Dark Tide or Current.* 

The yearly evaporation at the tropics of fully fourteen 
or fifteen feet of ocean water, causes the great equatorial 
current of the Pacific which moves westward at first, then 
splits into two streams, one of which curves northward to- 
wards the colder waters of the sea of Japan, but gives off 
minor eddying currents running at 30 to 40 knots around 
the greater islands of the empire. Where the cold waters 
meet them condensation of the water-laden air takes place 
with the resulting formation of great cloud banks. The 



*Not "Black River," as Eeclus translates it in The Ocean. (English 
edition, p. 82.) 



Introductory. 1 9 

water appears to be of a deep, almost indigo blue colour, 
whence the name given to the stream by the Japanese. 
Fish occur in great numbers where the arctic current of 
fresher, lighter, and cooler water meets the warm salt 
stream from the south amidst great commotion. And 
these seem to be attracted by the myriads of minute 
organisms which the water there contains. The analogy 
of this great current to our own Gulf Stream has been 
pointed out, and there can be no doubt as to its great in- 
fluence on the climate of Japan. A difference of from 
8 to 10 degrees centigrade may be observed in passing 
from its waters to the cold currents from the north, and 
the effect of this on the superjacent atmosphere is very 
marked. Sudden and severe changes of temperature are 
often noticed on the southern coasts of Japan, and even in 
Yedo Bay. They are evidently due to eddies or branch 
currents from the great streams of cold and warm waters 
which interweave themselves in the neighbourhood. 

In the northern island, which is rapidly being *'colonised" 
since the Restoration, the extremes of temperature are 
somewhat greater than in England. In the vicinity of 
Tokio the winter is usually clear and mild, with occasional 
sharp frosts and heavy falls of snow. In summer the heat 
is intensely oppressive for three months or so. The mean 
temperature is of little practical importance. The ther- 
mometer not seldom records a heat of 88° to even 97° 
Fah. in the shade, and even at night the heat remains so 
high that sleep becomes impossible, the air being muggy 
and no breath of wind stirring. The greatest heat is 
usually from the middle of June to early in September, 
but there are often brief periods of hot weather even in 



20 Nine Years in Nipon. 

May. The cold in winter is much more severe on the 
north-western coasts, and the roads across the main island 
are often blocked with snow, so that communication is 
suspended for months. 

In such a summary sketch as this, it is impossible to 
say almost anything of the fauna and flora of Japan. 
Thome gives China and Japan a botanical district to 
themselves. The useful bamboo flourishes in all parts of 
the land, sugar cane and the cotton plant grow in 
the southern parts, tea almost everywhere. The 
tobacco plant, hemp, maize or Indian corn, mulberry for 
silk-worm food, rice, wheat, barley, millet, buckwheat, 
potatoes, yams, are all cultivated. The beech, the oak, 
maples and pine trees, in rich variety ; azaleas, camelias, 
etc., grow in moor and forest. Some of the more charac- 
teristic plants are wistaria, salisburia, cryptomeria, chrys- 
anthemums, and varieties of evergreens such as retinos- 
pora, now well known to all British gardeners. Many 
familiar wild flowers are to be gathered by hedgerow or 
mossy bank — such as violets, blue bells, forget-me-not, 
thyme, dandelion, and its allies. The woods are rich in 
ferns, amongst which the royal fern is conspicuous, 
orchids, creepers, lichens, mosses, fungi, and liverworts, 
while the aquatic flora is extensive. The beautiful lotus, 
though imported, may now fairly be considered as 
naturalised. There are many water-lilies, reeds, and 
rushes, some of which are of great utility. 

The mammalia of Japan are not numerous. In ancient 
times, before the dawn of history, two species of dwarf 
elephants existed in the plains around Tokio. There are 
many monkeys (Macacus) in some parts, and even in ex- 



Introductory. 2 1 

tremely northern latitudes. Foxes abound, and are 
reverenced ; but it is said none are ever found in Shikoku. 
Wolves and bears are destructive in the north, and had at 
one time a more extensive field. There are wild antelopes, 
red deer, wild boars, raccoon dogs, badgers, otters, stoats, 
ferrets, bats (including a peculiar fruit bat), moles, shrews, 
and rats ; while the sea is specially rich in seals, sea-otters, 
and whales. The country has been found quite unsuitable 
for sheep, but goats thrive well, although not hitherto 
much favoured. Oxen are used for draught. Horses are 
small, but of fair quality, and the breed is being im- 
proved. The cats are often nearly tail-less. The dogs 
are of a low, half-wolfish breed. There are some three 
hundred birds known in Japan. Few of them are what 
we call song-birds, but the lark is at least one brilliant 
exception. Game birds are pretty plentiful, and are now 
protected. 

Insects are very numerous — no traveller will dispute 
that — and Japan is now greatly courted by entomologists, 
who have done much within the last few years to increase 
our knowledge of the treasures Japan has to yield to 
science in that department. Locusts are often destruc- 
tive, and mosquitoes are a great pest. Bees, the silk- 
worm, and the wax-insect are, however, highly appreciated. 

There are several kinds of lizards, a great variety of 
frogs, seven or eight snakes, including a deadly cerastes, 
and two or three kinds of tortoise. Edible turtles abound 
in the Bonins. The crustaceans are numerous and in- 
teresting, and of fish there is extraordinary variety, 
especially of marine species. Oysters are excellent and 
in great quantity, and Americans can revel in clam 



22 Nine Years in Nipon. 

chowder. Cuttle-fish often rival the monsters described 
by Victor Hugo. 

Mr. Blakiston, who has given careful attention to the 
subject, notes that Japan contains, besides a peculiar 
fauna, other elements of a tropical and Eurasian character. 
He proposes to account for the first imported element, 
reptiles, insects, and bats, by the application of Darwin's 
ingenious supposition that drifted ancestors might reach 
such an island home through the aid of such a current as 
the Black Stream. The Eurasian larger mammalian 
element might reach Japan, Mr. Blakiston supposes, by 
the freezing over of the Tsugaru channel, which seems 
quite a reasonable idea. The fauna of the northern island 
Yesso thus stops abruptly at the channel which separates 
it from the rest of Japan ; and while many of the birds 
found on the mainland are peculiar to Japan, those found 
in Yesso are often identical with Siberio-Chinese species 
of the Asiatic continent. 

As to the Human members of the fauna, there are two 
well-marked races— the Japanese proper and the Ainos in 
Yesso, of whom there are only some ten thousand surviv- 
ing. The latter, in spite of a great deal of crude writing 
on the subject, cannot show any clear claim to be con- 
sidered the aborigines, are not necessarily older in their 
occupancy than the Japanese themselves, and were never 
very numerous. There is no evidence that they were 
ever greatly different from what they are now, and it may 
be considered tolerably certain that they are an un- 
important element in estimating the " pre-historic " traces 
of human life in Japan, which have a much closer relation 
to the present Japanese race. The Ainos have a language 



Introductory. 23 

of their own, and are indeed in a sense anatomically 
distinct from the Japanese ; but of the so-called Ainos 
a large proportion, through inter-marriage probably, are 
almost undistinguishable from them, except by acquired 
language and customs. Some of them are rather hairy. 

As to the ethnological affinities of the Japanese, nothing 
is as yet very certain, and mere speculation is of no avail. 
They answer to that general conception most of us have 
formed of Mongoloi nations, but what a Mongol is 
exactly I do not pretend to know, and to call another 
race Mongoloid is only to deepen our ignorance immensely. 

According to far -Eastern cosmography there are six 
points of the compass, the zenith and nadir very logically 
being added to those with which we are familiar. With 
charming completeness and symmetry science, aided by 
tradition, has provided a theory of original migration 
from each one of those six points ; viz., the Soil (Buddhist 
view) ; America ; China or Accadia ; Africa, or the 
Malayan peninsula, or the Southern Isles of the Pacific ; 
Saghalien or Kamtschatka ; the Celestial Regions of the 
Sun. 

Practically there is now great apparent homogeneity of 
race — excluding the small gipsy-like tribe of Ainos — 
throughout the empire. I believe, however, that, as in 
Scotland, France, and Spain, there are faint traces of a 
long past fusion of once distinct ethnic types, which 
further study might yet clearly elucidate. The Japanese, 
in short, are a race of as yet unknown origin, comprising 
some thirty-seven millions speaking one language, of fair 
skinned, black-haired, pig-eyed, lithe, bright, good- 
humoured, revengeful, courteous, flighty, intensely pug- 



24 Nine Years in Nipon. 

nacious little people, who tell you they came originally 
from heaven, and I sincerely hope they will all get back 
again. 



First Impressions of Yokohama. 25 



CHAPTER 11. 

First Impressions of Yokohama. 

Tropical Fruits and Icy Decks — An Economical Lighthouse — Japanese 
Horror of Paint — Human Vultures — Yokohama and Its People — A 
Mushroom Settlement— Bird's-eye View — No Loafers — Human Han- 
soms — Building Stone — Straw Clothing— Tribute to " Tootsicums " — 
A Motley Crowd. 

THE pale yellow bananas, so like a mixture of honey 
and mealy potatoes, and the pine apples with 
their bluish green leaves, covered with peachy bloom, 
and their golden, ruby-tipped juicy scales, of which 
we thirsty travellers had laid in such liberal stores at 
Singapore and Hong Kong — which had long hung under 
the awning in hospitable but fast diminishing festoons — 
have passed away as a sweet vision of the sunny tropics. 

We have been steaming steadily now for a day or two, 
through a pale yellow sea, the colour of which, we are told, 
is due to the mud-laden waters of that euphonious stream, 
the Yang-tsze-keang ; the male passengers had given up 
their garments of white duck and were now — all but blue 
noses and red ears — encased in the thickest coats or 
cloaks they could fish out of their mouldy trunks ; for on 
these chill mornings in the end of February, when the 
daily scrubbing of the decks takes place, the salt water 
from the hose at once freezes hard on the clean planks, 
making a rather too slippery morning promenade. We 
are now in the latitude of Japan, and after two months' 



26 Nine Years in Nipon. 

tedious pilgrimage, a day or two more and our weary 
journey will be at an end, and Japan, of which we have 
longingly dreamed so often, will be once and forever a 
genuine possession of our minds ! 

We have taken a V shaped course, whose angle almost 
touches the equator, and in the short space of sixty days 
have experienced, twice over, nearly all the changes the 
thermometer can indicate to us. 

On the third of March we passed on our starboard side 
Iwoga shima (sJiima means island), an active volcano, 
which was smoking away very vigorously from various 
crevices that seamed its dark sides. At night it forms an 
inexpensive lighthouse of the first order. Its chief peak 
was said in the chart to be 2469 feet high, but it struck me 
as being probably a good deal less in height, a statement 
which, of course, in the case of an active volcano does not 
in the least imply inaccuracy on the part of former 
observers. 

Faint through combined distance and haze hung in 
the air on the landward side, dreamy visions of fawn- 
tinted mountains patched with bright green, which we 
knew to be at last the land of our aims and hopes. As 
we entered the great and busy Bay of Yedo, a thick haze 
hung over all things, blending in one whitey grey sea and 
land and sky. We hailed the lighthouse which at once 
gives a sign to the approaching visitor of an alert and 
advancing civilisation ; got a pilot on board and were soon 
steaming gently up into Yokohama harbour through fleets 
of white-sailed junks and sanpans or small rowing-boats. 
Unlike those of China, they are usually unpainted, and 
we soon found this horror of paint to be almost a religious 



First Impressions of Yokohama. 27 

principle with Japanese of the old school, of which more 
anon. The modern spirit, however, which in Japan is not 
always very " aesthetic," revels in penki, and can hardly 
get enough of it, either as to quantity or variety, laid on 
houses and furniture. 

A Chinaman loves to have an ever unwinking eye 
painted on the prow of his sanpan, and his standard joke 
is to explain to the enquiring stranger, with combined 
simplicity and terseness, " no got eye, no can see," and in 
the progressive style of rhetoric dearly loved by Confucius 
and his followers, he adds, demurely — "no can see, no can 
go." Now, curiously enough, the Egyptians long ago had 
a similar eye — that of Horus- — similarly placed on the 
prow of their galleys. In Japan, however, in place of an 
eye — which I have never seen there — a clever zoological 
compromise between an eel and a snake is painted in red, 
chiefly, at the bow, and this is usually the only trace of 
paint to be seen on the craft. 

As we drew nearer our intended place of anchorage the 
boats seemed to be drawn towards us by something almost 
like magnetic attraction. We could see them hastening 
afar, with attendant splash and shout to share in the spoil, 
like vultures swooping down on a stranded whale. 

The boatmen are exceedingly active, square-shouldered, 
squat little fellows with sinewy limbs ; as a rule, less 
tawny than I had expected to find them, although some 
of them were pretty dark-skinned. As their bodies were 
veiled with very little else than a damask-like pattern, in 
two or perhaps three colours, tattoed into their skin, one 
had a good opportunity of judging as to their degree of 
muscular development. The Japanese generally do not, 



2S Nine Years in Nipon. 

I think, like so many of the Eastern races, form good 
subjects for artistic representation. Neither men nor 
women have much of the subtle grace and impressive 
dignity of form and gait that in the Indian and Arab 
races impress the western imagination so powerfully. 
' ,^.There are, of course, exceptions to this general fact, but 
after again seeing and studying other races this impression 
which I formed at first was greatly strengthened. 
Grotesque and humorous portrayal of the human form, 
and reflected likenesses of the same in animals was 
inevitably and naturally the direction in which Japanese 
art-in relation to man had to assert itself, and in this line 
,^it has never been greatly surpassed. 

Yokohama, where, of course, we arrived on a Sun- 
day, is not a very striking place in itself — a low 
swamp, ditched all over at right angles with broad, 
shallow, tidal canals, filled with a concentrated 
essence of sub-tropical drainage which the sea does 
its humble best, twice a day, to assist the authorities 
in rendering tolerable ; and bridged over at very frequent 
intervals with unpainted wooden structures not of a very 
endurable character ; a town of rapid weedy growth ; 
choked up with closely built hongs or warehouses, some 
really fine and well-stored western shops, a good hotel or 
two, acres on acres of bonded and free stores, custom- 
houses, banks, shipping offices, poisoning grog shops, 
two well built churches, tiny shops of Chinese money- 
changers, tasteful bungalows with pretty gardens, riff-raff 
lodging-houses, a spacious railway station, an anchorage 
wide enough for all the fleets of all the nations, and above 



First Impressions of Yokohama. 29 

all, Fuji now gleaming in its snowy surplice like a solemn 
priest before the altar of God. 

The foreign residences, quite home-like and tasteful, are 
built on the " bluff" — the sea-ward, wave-eaten margin of 
a gently undulating fertile plateau which marks the level 
of the ancient coast, and affords pleasant and tolerably 
healthy sites for numerous cottages and villas built when 
military protection was needed and afforded at the 
" treaty ports," and when foreign trade was much better 
and more hopeful than it is supposed to be now. The 
gardens are delightful to look at, and one sees here 
many plants growing openly which are quite rare in the 
British Isles. From the bluff you may get a good view of 
the native town, spread out on the reclaimed swamp of 
plain below, which we can also see to be bounded all 
round by the edge of the plateau which forms this same 
bluff 

We can see the busy harbour, dotted with ever-moving 
small craft, among which float several great ironclads of 
different flags, and many of the largest sized cargo, 
passenger steamers, and sailing vessels. Round the mar- 
gin of the bay sweeps with firm geometric curve the Tokio 
railway and the centre of the channel is crowded with 
large white-winged junks, slowly making their way up 
with a favouring breeze to the great metropolis of the 
Mikado's Empire. Turning to the west, Fuji rises to a 
height of about 13,000 feet from behind a frowning mass of 
^ lofty dark hills which are sharply silhouetted against its 
dazzling snowy sides. They terminate a long rugged 
range which rises in the blue distance far north of Tokio. 

Let us now, descending by an abrupt flight of stone 




30 Nine Years in Nipon. 

steps, or staggering down one of the steeply-graded roads 
that connect the low-lying native town with the bluff, take 
a peep at the streets and at the people who are moving so 
actively about in them, for in Japan there are almost 

no native loafers to be seen. Every 
one has, or at least pretends to have, 
some means of gaining a living by 
industry. It is true, we shall not see 
unsophisticated Japan as we might 
have seen it, even here, a few years 
before, but neither do we think can it 
now be seen by living eye almost 
anywhere in the empire, so great and 
sudden and far-reaching has been the 

Unloading a Rice Junk. By 

a Japanese Artist. influcnce of thc once greatly dreaded 
" black ships," and the lore and merchandise they brought 
with them for good or ill. 

Probably the first thing that strikes the new comer as 
thoroughly Japanese is the jinrikisha or " man-power- 
carriage." It is a kind of tiny hansom in which one or 
two may ride, and is drawn by one man or by two, — tandem 
fashion, — and not a bad means of locomotion it proves to 
be if only the springs are good and the roads in tolerable 
order. I have gone a continuous journey of about 500 miles 
in this way, and at a most rapid rate. Those little "Pull- 
man-cars," as they have been facetiously called, are used 
by everybody, and are to be found everywhere through- 
out the country, and indeed even in some norts of 
China and India. They were, however, unknown till the 
"foreigners" came, and are usually said to have been 
invented by an American in Yokohama. It is very 



First Impressions of Yokohama, 31 

difficult to believe that an American ever did anything of 
the kind. Photographs may still be seen showing the 
first transition from the old familiar idea of the mi-koshi or 
sacred car to the more modern light carriage. It 
was certainly at first a vehicle of the clumsiest and 
most primitive kind, even when thus improved, and had 
no springs of any kind ; but perhaps the American 
" inventor " did not know about springs. They are often 
gaudily painted or lacquered and adorned with tragic 
subjects from Japanese mythology, tradition or the stage. 
In wet weather a hood made of a tough, almost untearable 
and evil-smelling oiled paper, without opening for light or 
ventilation, is drawn over the guest — as the hire is 
delicately called — while he is perhaps trundelled rapidly 
along in a direction quite opposite to that desired by 
him. Nobody, however, is supposed to lose temper on 
such occasions, and certainly the coolies themselves rarely 
do so, even when much time is lost. 

On the way to the Tokio railway terminus — the word 
" station " is now almost Japanese — you pass a number of 
rather stately edifices, built generally of a soft, easily- 
carved pale green or marbled tuff, which has the double 
merit of always looking well without the meretricious 
adornment of paint, and of resisting fire for a long time — 
rarely long enough, alas ! to resist the heat of those awful 
general conflagrations which are so common in the wooden 
built towns of old Japan. This lava stone also, I think, 
weathers much more slowly than its crumbly texture 
would seem to threaten, but there are many varieties. 
It is supposed to have been chiefly formed by the sub- 
marine deposit of masses of pumice stone from north- 



32 Nine Years i7i Nipon. 

ward flowing currents when the low-lying land was 
submerged, as we know it to have once been. 

When your biped in harness at last holds out with 
well-feigned disgust the dirty little bit of government 
paper, which is only twice his proper fare, and utters tor- 
rents of hopelessly unintelligible abuse, you look with im- 
perturbable calmness over the hurrying crowds hastening 
to take their railway tickets or their seats. If the day is 
wet and cold, short cloth capes, often of fine broadcloth, 
or little check woollen shawls are worn by the men, 
while the humbler classes use tippets of plaited grass 
with broad leaves, or of rushes with the pointed 
ends turned out and downwards so as to shed the 
rain, which it does pretty effectually. Strangely 
enough, the same kind of grass coat is worn in the pro- 
vince of Minho, in Spain, but why this primitive-looking 
garment should in Japan have long been called mino is a 
fact which has not received any explanation. 

Many of the passengers also are clad in oiled paper 
waterproofs — black, dark green, or of the natural dirty- 
brownish yellow colour ; • while nearly all of them have 
heavy clumsy paper umbrellas, gaily coloured, and often 
with symbolic designs painted upon their covers. I think 
they are pretty safe curios to send home to admiring country 
cousins, but don't be too sure about anything when travel- 
ling. I bargained once for similar articles of great novelty 
of appearance, while travelling in the valleys of British 
Bhootan, but found that they had all been manufactured 
in Glasgow, whither I was proposing to send them ! 

Men and women, boys and girls, all wear very short 
indigo or white cotton socks hooked at the side like boots^ 



First Impressions of Yokohama. 33 

leaving the great toe apart from the rest in order to give hold 
to the latchet of the straw sandals which the peasants, 
artizans, and poor wear, or of the high- toothed wooden pat- 
tens which the better-off clumsily clatter about in. They 
are of various patterns, some resembling our clogs, others 
are lacquered and of rather elegant design. The noise of 
the wood-shod feet of passengers emerging from an 
arriving train reminds one of a regiment of cavalry pas- 
sing. Other and sweeter associations seem to have been 
sometimes re-called. I remember reading a love song, in 
which the heart of a sighing swain is made to leap with 
tender joy as the dear little tootsicums of his adored one 
come " pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat ! " down the alley. I think 
that poet had genuine imagination. 

Rarely, very rarely now (1873), you may see a depressed 
and mournful samurai^ or knight of the two-swords, with 
basin - shaped hat, the prominent and 
richly-adorned hilt of his keen razor-like 
blade sticking out from his silken girdle, 
with which in better days he had ever 
been ready to maintain the honour of 
his lord ; and beside it, cross - wise, 
another little one almost like a stiletto, 
with which he was even now ready in a 
moment to defend his own, in the saddest 
^ ^ , and, to us westerns, strans^est way. Few 

A Samurai. ' ^ o • 

out of Japan have any idea of the dis- 
tress that multitudes of those often unwise, but in many 
respects cultured, noble, and high-minded men have had 
to endure before they could bring themselves to part with 
a trusty weapon, which had been notched and bent in 




34 Ni7ie Years in Nipon. 

many a fray, to some cold curio hunter. Those 
knights of the so recent feudal age of Japan are 
fast falling into other ways, hiring themselves out 
as common servants, or going, often rashly, with 
their slender savings into mean trade. What an un- 
worked mine is here for the future Walter Scott of Japan ; 
stores of living feudal romances in this prosaic nineteenth 
century of ours ! 

The costumes of the people in this evidently transi- 
tional period, are very amusing and suggestive. The 
most original combinations of Eastern and Western 
ideas occur in every few yards of our progress, 
more notable usually than picturesque or pleasing. 
You may thus see an intelligent young fellow, perhaps 
a clerk in a merchant's office, with the newest style of felt 
hat from Paris or London, an antique Japanese robe of 
silk, wooden pattens of great height, and a common bath- 
towel carefully wound around his neck for a comforter ; 
if the gilded price ticket happens to remain on it, so much 
the more ornamental ! It was not at the time of which I 
speak at all unusual to see some important official going 
to dine in full dress — that is, with European " claw-ham- 
mer coat " and white kid gloves, w^hile his feet were shod 
with pattens ; or you might meet a thoroughly respect- 
able citizen of weight and presence going along the prin- 
cipal streets on a hot day in New European " store- 
clothes," with nether limbs enveloped only in a cool white 
cotton garment, not usually made visible to the general 
public. Varieties of dress tend to become badges indica- 
tive of business or profession, and it has been interesting 
to watch the crystallising process going on here, the very 



First Impressions of Yokohama. 35 

same one by which our English wigs of different periods 
are like fossils indicating, say, the chronological strata in 
which particular offices had their origin. The government 
officials of inferior grades delight in a cap of western 
shape, the marines dress like our British marines, the 
pupils of the Imperial College of Engineering wear Scotch 
bonnets, while the medical students in the University 
appear in those neat dark blue caps which adorn the 
crania of peripatetic German bands in our country. 

The country people, farmers or rural shop-keepers, have 
the most characteristic appearance, and are most interest- 
ing to visitors. They struck me as being considerably 
less in stature than the denizens of the towns, an im- 
pression which their stoop and sandalled feet does not 
wholly account for. In rain and in sunshine the rustics, 
who are always a target for city witlings everywhere, wear 
odd-looking, palm-leaf hats a yard or thereabouts in 
diameter, and in wet weather they thatch themselves in 
the peculiar grass overcoat I have already mentioned, 
which makes them look like so many hedgehogs. The 
country women, never very remarkable for beauty, are 
not seen at their best when staring and grinning with 
widely-open mouths as the foreign barbarians pass, more 
especially when their teeth are duly blackened after 
marriage. They wear light blue figured cotton handker- 
chiefs, tied in a clumsy knot round their heads. The 
young girls delight in scarlet, or other bright-coloured 
underskirts. 

I suppose there may be about twenty millions of those 
humble, good-natured toilers in the fields, and civilization 
is slowly but very surely reaching them too. It is curious 



36 Nine Years in Nip07i. 

to notice how those simple people bow profoundly to the 
gold-laced guard before they can presume to enter the car 
beside which he seems to stand sentry. Sometimes the 
unsophisticated traveller would leave his pattens outside 
on the platform, as he had been wont courteously to do 
on entering a house, expecting to find them lying there 
when he should arrive at his destination ! 

There is a fair sprinkling in the crowd of fat, prosperous 
Chinamen, who somehow contrive to handle most of the 
money which passes out from or into Japan, of English 
or American "mashers" of both sexes doing the tour round 
the world, and getting done pretty well themselves ; and 
not a few smart-looking, elegantly dressed Japanese, with 
gold chains of rather extravagant dimensions, who have 
exhausted the resources of European civilization, mastered 
all philosophies, sciences, and religions, and now come 
back to their countrymen, perhaps to teach what they be- 
lieve — if they believe anything at all. 



A Run on the Tokio Railway. 



37 



CHAPTER III. 



A Run on the Tokio Railway. 



Granny and the Engine — A Solid Road — Lady Smokers — Paddy Fields and 
Egrets — Fuji, the Peerless Mountain — A Clerical Cyclist — Quiet Rest- 
ing Places — An Unpicturesque Metropolis — Silent Streets — Musical 
Groans. 



O we are at last to ride to Yedo in a 
railway train ! While we are waiting 
on the platform a group of most diminu- 
tive country women, who have come 
from afar to witness the wonders of the 
treaty port, are gazing with mingled 
awe and admiration on a handsome 
little engine gleaming with burnished 
brass, which is engaged in making up the train for 
Tokio. One of them, who is very old and garrulous, 
and who speaks with a quaint patois^ calls it a jokisen 
(steam-ship), and whenever it approaches she runs off 
screaming and laughing alternately, like the simple old 
girl she is ! O baa san (granny) has evidently just 
seen the railway train for the first time. It is rather 
wonderful, however, to observe how stolidly the majority 
of the people seem to accept and appropriate the new 
ideas and appliances from the west as mere matters of 
course. Still there remains in the steam engine for a long 




,g Nine Yeai's in Nipon. 

time a great fascination for the Japanese mind. The toy- 
shops are full of pictures in which a railway train is the 
central object of attraction, and an intelligent medical 
student from the country told me with great glee, that he 
had secured lodgings from which he could see the trams 

glide past every day. 

The line is now a double one, and passenger trains of 
some eight or ten carriages, first, second, and third classes, 
leave either terminus every hour or so. 

The traffic is not only considerable, but the return on 
the mileage is said to be unusually good. The line, con- 
structed by British engineers, is, on the testimony of a 
distinguished American railway constructor, "as firm as a 
rock"; the gauge is somewhat narrower than the usual 
narrow British guage ; the engines are of British build, 
somewhat too light, perhaps, but effective and extremely 
ele-ant in appearance, while the carriages, with the ex- 
ception of those in the third class, have the seats arranged 
lengthwise, like our tramway cars. The first class cars 
are sub-divided into three small compartments, the cen- 
tral one opening into the other two. Entrance is made 
as in American cars, from either end of the carriage, but 
the platform is narrow. Semaphore signals are used on 
the block system, somewhat imperfectly carried out, it 
seemed to me. The intermediate stations are very well 
planned and built, and iron foot-bridges cross the track, 
which is fenced in all the way along. There have been 
very few railway casualties of any kind-omitting, of 
course, deliberate suicides, which are painfully common- 
and hardly one of those accidents shows any special 
tendency to carelessness or inefficiency on the part of 



A Run on the Tokio Railway. 39 

Japanese officials or workmen. Already the railways in 
the country have begun to work a social revolution, more 
strongly cementing the family already united so closely 
bringing communities into closer and more frequent con- 
tact, developing pilgrimages to obscure shrines, and stim- 
ulating commerce in farm produce. Above all, railway 
precision is communicating a notion of the importance of 
the minuter divisions of time, especially in relation to 
business appointments, for not long ago the twelve periods 
of two hours into which the day was divided was the only 
diurnal division of time met with in daily life. 

Little square green cushions are supplied for about a 
penny a run, which are a great convenience to third-class 
passengers not blessed with much adipose tissue. 

After our arrival in Yokohama we lost little time in 
getting our luggage cleared by the custom-house authori- 
ties, whom we found stringent in their examination, but 
civil. We then made our way in a train of jinrikishas to 
the terminus of the railway for Tokio. The company of 
our fellow-travellers would have been much more agreeable 
without the odious and depressing stink of coarse and ill- 
flavoured tobacco which filled the compartment. The pipe- 
bowl is fortunately very small, but its employment is just 
all the more frequent. Handsomely dressed and, I 
believe, quite respectable young girls, leaving their pattens 
on the floor, tucked up their white-stockinged feet on 
the matted seats, and proceeded to puff away with great 
solemnity and sweetness. The conversation seemed to 
consist chiefly of ejaculations and pufls of smoke, and 
certainly to one who had only acquired certain phrases 
and a few useful vocabularies on the voyage out, could 



.Q Ni7te Years in Nipon. 

not possibly prove either intelligible or interesting. The 
first station on the way is Kanagawa. Commodore Perry, 
of the United States, made his treaty— the first one 
entered into with western foreigners in recent times after 
long centuries of seclusion— in 1854, at the then miserable 
little fishing village of Yokohama or Cross Strand, It was 
thought by the timid Japanese authorities to be safely 
separated by a wide and barren marine swamp from the 
metropolis at the head of the Bay of Yedo. In 1859, 
however. Sir Rutherford Alcock and the Hon. Townsend 
Harris, ministers of the United States, gained a conces- 
sion in Kanagawa, across the swamp, and three miles 
nearer the Shogun's great city of Tokio, and here 
practically modern foreign relations with Japan may 
be said to have begun. For various reasons Yoko- 
hama regained its ground, and Kanagawa is now little 
but a low and populous suburb of Yokohama, although 
the official documents of the British Government still, 
somewhat strangely for so radical a country, continue 
to give Kanagawa its full dignity. Leaving it to its full 
but fruitless enjoyment, we dash through a cutting, pasta 
series of beautifully wooded eminences, and are out into 

the open country. 

It seems to be one vast fertile plain of moist paddy 
fields, laid out in small squares, like the map of the United 
States, through which a few snowy-plumed egrets may be 
seen stalking, and on our right, seen through a sombre 
fringe of dark green pines, lies, spread out, the grand 
Bay, through whose foam-flecked azure fleets of white- 
sailed junks are sawing their way. 

Away beyond rich loamy fields of leeks and garlic, rise 



A Run on the Tokio Railway. 41 

steeply-sloping wooded bluffs of no great height, whose 
bosky sides are dotted with unpainted Shinto or vermillion- 
coloured Buddhist shrines, and stained with sweet patches 
of pale rose-coloured early plum blossom ; while far above 
these rise the dark masses of the Oyama range, crowned 
with the lofty truncated cone of Fuji, still white with the 
winter's snow, and matchless in the delicate grace of its 
almost flawless curves. There is a tradition, still widely 
believed in Japan, that it bursts from the solid earth in a 
single night, making by way of compensation a great gap 
in the land which became the magnificent fresh-water lake 
Biwa, of which we shall hear again. One cannot refrain 
from speaking and thinking of Fuji while living anywhere 
almost within sixty miles of it. It forces itself upon one's 
notice, and is always beautiful from any point of view 
and under almost any sky. 

Two German scientists give its height, — Mr. Knipping 
at twelve thousand two hundred and thirty-four English 
feet, and Dr. Rein at twelve thousand two hundred and 
eighty-seven feet. My brother-in-law, Mr. R. Stewart, of 
the Imperial Japanese survey, found it by his measure- 
ment to be twelve thousand three hundred and sixty- 
five feet. Messrs. Satow and Hawes mention that the 
Japanese suppose that the sand brought down during the 
day by the pilgrims goes up again at night ! 

At Kawasaki the river is spanned by a fine iron 
viaduct of great length, and the plain which seems to 
have been formed as a delta (in the wider sense of the 
word) is some twelve or fourteen miles broad where 
the railway crosses. The lower part of it was a few 



42 Nine Years in Nipon. 

years ago flooded over a very large area, with disastrous 
results. 

There are numerous pretty little villages and quiet 
hamlets on the way to Tokio which seem to be mostly the 
abodes of fishermen, workers in straw, or shopkeepers 
dependent on the simple wants of an agricultural popula- 
tion. Here and there we get a glimpse through its 
bordering pine trees of a famous imperial road, — the 
Tokaido, — dusty and ill kept, as most roads in Japan are. 
You cannot read very much of a good old romance with- 
out finding yourself " located," as Yankees say, on some 
part of this great thoroughfare, or at least on one similar 
to it, where so much of the romantic life and knightly 
activity of the ancient empire found its expression. But 
much of its glory departed after the Shogun fell, and the 
railway has since arisen and shrieked its doom along with 
that of feudal Japan. It forms still a pleasant drive, and 
one esteemed clerical friend cycles it with great gusto even 
in the dustiest weather. 

On the railway you pass several populous villages with 
well-managed stations, through the turnstiles of which 
crowds are all day coming and going, to worship at some 
famous or family shrine, or to do business of some kind ; 
priests of every Buddhist sect ; pilgrims clad in white, with 
tinkling bells; fussy western-dressed officials or foreign 
sportsmen with gun, bag, passport — and whisky flask. 
Sometimes a little rural graveyard, with grey stones, 
lichened o'er with creamy or orange, pale pink or dark 
brown growths, reminds us of quiet holy spots amidst the 
hills of dear old Scotland. 

Peaceful farm steadings with steep-thatched roofs 



A Run on the Tokio Railway. 43 

are embosomed, even at this early season, in dense clumps 
of dark green foliage (of the previous summer), through 
which feathery sprays of the lighter-tinted bamboo rise 
with bold curve, and droop towards earth again in a 
graceful sweep. The deep rosy pink of the frequent plum 
tree gives a warm summer-like blush to the woods, and the 
vegetable gardens are even now by no means lacking in 
rich young verdure of the most varied forms and tints. 

As we draw near the Mikado's capital, bluffs, similar to 
those we left behind us at Yokohama, draw in towards 
the shore, showing well the water-worn margin of the 
old upraised sea-coast which bounded the bay when much 
of the great plain still lay under its blue waters. 

Near the point where the railway touches it again lies 
an old shell-heap which has excited a good deal of heated 
discussion as to its antiquity. Others are still in course of 
formation of a more modern type, a few miles nearer the 
city. After some fifty minutes run over a smooth road, 
we pass at length through a lofty and leaky cutting, 
alongside of the Tokaido (which here becomes a busy 
street, full of vivid pictures of Japanese life and manners), 
into Tokio. The line sweeps along the curve of the Bay 
on an embankment, from which you view the line of rude 
forts, built by the aid of French military engineers, but 
now superseded by one or two silent " krupps " which lurk 
among the trees somewhere about the mouth of the river. 
As we first approach the straggling group of mean build- 
ings called Tokio, I must candidly confess my feeling was 
one of great surprise and disappointment. 

Imagine a grey expanse of dirty sea- water, dotted with 
dirty-looking grey junks, and bounded by a grey wilder- 



44 Nine Years in Nip on. 

ness of dirty shingle, covering dingy wooden houses, with 
nothing to relieve the eye, save here and there, at great 
intervals, a bosky clump of trees rising from a fragment of 
the old higher coast-line I have already mentioned, and 
shading the lofty tent-like tiled roof of a colossal temple. 
This wide waste of wooden structures seems in the thin 
smoky haze to merge into the horizon, while the sky-line is 
broken by a straggling big chimney or two which 
honestly do their best, by intermittently belching forth 
funereal plumes of hideously black smoke, to impart to 
this stagnant capital a commercial appearance. 

But is this quiet, sleepy-looking county town on a large 
scale Yedo, " the largest city in the world " of our infallible 
school geographies ? Certainly its 700,000 or so of in- 
habitants contrive to keep themselves wonderfully well 
out of observation. The population has, indeed, been 
often stated at a much higher figure than I have just 
given, and an important Japanese official recently referred 
in public to the city as containing a million of inhabitants. 
Complete reliance, I am fully persuaded, cannot be given 
to the statistics on this point ; but even those pro- 
perly do not refer to the city itself as containing a million 
of people, but to the municipal district administered by 
the Tokio/?/, which is much more extensive than the city 
and includes some islands far out at sea. 

I think I have never been in any city — always excepting, 
of course, dear little St. Andrews — whose citizens made so 
little noise — a fact which can only be partly explained by 
the vastness of the area over which it is spread, and by the 
great network of broad canals connecting the moats of the 
castle with the bay itself, an arrangement which has to a 



A Run on the Tokio Railway. 45 

large extent rendered cartage unnecessary. The two- 
wheeled carts in use are very primitive in structure. 
They are usually drawn by two men, in slight attire, 
aided by other two or more pushing behind. They move 
very rapidly along, as you will find if you try to keep 
pace with them, in long swinging steps, to the accompani- 
ment of a shrill " hoich ! how ! " which, in every variety 
of tone and key, breaks the almost painful stillness of the 
thoroughfares. In the suburbs chiefly may be also seen 
great trains of bullock carts and of heavy-laden pack- 
horses, which are chiefly used for far inland and mountain 
traffic. 

Near the station, which is well built, there is a fine 
Japanese bank built of variegated volcanic stone, a stone 
arched bridge, rows of stores, and stretching away through 
the centre of the city lies the Tori or chief boulevard, 
built of stucco covered brick. 

Light tramway cars now run from one end of the city 
to the other at very moderate fares, and are largely 
patronised, especially by artizans and shopkeepers, who 
seem all to be after business of some kind. This once 
fine street is, however, losing its characteristic regularity ; 
a wretched pavement of common red bricks trips up the 
pedestrian clattering along in his wooden pattens. 

When we arrived in the spring of 1874, its double row 
of pines, acacias, and plum trees — which latter were in 
full bloom — formed a sight of rare and touching beauty in 
the very heart of so large and populous a city. 



^5 Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER IV. 
Street Scenes. 

Shadow Pictures-Street Names-Esthetic Mud-pies- Kite Flying— A Hint 
for Arctic Explorers-Fishy Conduct of an English Professor-The 
Queen's English— A Japanese Crowd— A Baby Cook Shop. 

A GREAT deal of Japanese life is passed in the 
streets, and can best be seen there. In the good 
times for which old-fashioned Japanese people sigh, much 
more of the domestic doings were visible to the public 
than would now be considered comely or proper ; but at 
all events there is little of that morbid concealment of 
private life which is so marked a feature in other Eastern 
countries. The houses are open from floor to roof in 
warm weather, and concealment is nearly impossible ; 
and at night, when the paper windows are drawn closely 
together, you may see many a painful tragedy or side- 
splitting comedy enacted in shadow by the unconscious 
inmates. Japanese caricaturists have, indeed, not been 
slow to seize and utilize this salient feature in the national 
life, and comic silhouettes or shadow-pictures are to be 
seen in any print-shop or bookseller's window. 

The cities of Tokio and Osaka are intersected with 
canals, and the bridges which cross them are necessarily 
numerous. They are often named in a very grand and 
poetical style: the " Bridge of Eternal Life," the "Fairy 
Assembly Bridge," and so on. A blind alley is called a 



Street Scenes. 47 

" bag street." So great is the love of nature amongst the 
people of Japan, that it is said some two-thirds of the 
streets in Tokio are named after natural objects ; a ten- 
dency which is amply illustrated by the whole decorative 
art of the country. Mr. Griffis has pointed out that great 
battlefields — and Japan has not been without them — are 
not commemorated in this way, nor do we find many 
names of heroes handed down to an admiring posterity in 
association with particular streets ; although popular 
wrestlers and fencing masters, priests and nuns, and one 
famous English pilot (Will Adams), have been thus im- 
mortalised. 

Passing along " Shipway Street " into " Lance and 
Arrow Street," let us see what we can find to interest, 
amuse, and instruct us. 

As we go out by the garden-gate, our cook's little girl 
(we have all men cooks here), O Tsuru, or Miss Crane, 
as she is called, is busy making, not mud pies, but a 
pretty little artificial garden, with bits of rock arranged 
with sloping strata, as in nature ; a rounded mountain, 
furrowed as if by centuries of rainfall, with tidy, tasteful 
walks, shaded by gnarled twigs of pine, and brightened 
with cleverly contrasted half-open buds of azaleas of 
various tints. A few blades of bamboo grass, curved by 
careful art, complete a very pleasing little landscape, 
which occupies just about one foot square ! It is common 
to speak of such manifestations of art-feeling in Japan 
as instinctive. I am not sure that I know what is meant 
by the term. I can understand, however, that certain 
ancestral tendencies and habits may be repeated, and in 
favourable circumstances emphasized in the offspring. 



. S Nine Years in Nipon. 

In regard to Japan, this almost unerring art-sense is 
demonstrably of comparatively recent origin, and was due 
primarily to foreign teaching. Art education of a most 
effective but informal kind, through diffusion of cheap il- 
lustrated books, has since then helped to develop taste for 
natural beauty, which had, of course, some existence before 
it could be developed. 

We are recalled from this digression by strange 
whirring sounds high up in the air, which remind 
us of the seolian harp. They are caused by "singing 
kites," which are of all shapes: such as a baby 
in Japanese long clothes, an eagle with pinions 
expanded and tail spread out, the hideous face of an 
ogre, or they may assume the form of a gaudy flower, 
or of a swallow-tailed butterfly. They are kept steady 
by two long tails, one at each of the lower corners; 
and the radiant juvenile who is the happy possessor 
of a good high-flyer, manages it deftly, sending it up 
as far as his store of cord will permit without moving 
more than a yard or two from his starting point. Great 
is the good nature shown by the jinrikisha men, as I 
have witnessed with ever-increasing wonder when on my 
professional rounds, if their faces are brought into sharp 
and sudden contact with kite-strings. Much dexterity is 
shown by passers-by in avoiding contact by a timely duck, 
and by the kite-flyers also in piloting the strings ; but 
whenever an accident occurs, however annoying it would 
be to us, it seems rather rarely to evoke even a frown, far 
less an angry word, or theological recrimination. 

It is reported that in ancient times large kites were 
used to aid spies in estimating the forces of the enemy, 



Street Scenes. 49 

just as among ourselves balloons have been used in 
modern warfare. A law existed in Tokio which enacted 
that kites were not to be made larger than a certain 
moderate size, the fear being that the Shogun's castle 
might be inspected from the city by conspirators. One 
of the most pleasing contributions by a medical writer in 
Japan (alas ! no more) to the Japan Weekly Mail, de- 
scribes a blind boy flying a kite in Tokio : — " Who shall 
describe the sight — who adequately pourtray our blind 
boy, as he stands with body bent forward and quivering 
with delight, as the kite tugs and strains to get away — his 
poor lustreless eyes widely distended, his cheeks flushed, 
his lips parted and trembling with excitement, and every 
involuntary muscle of his hands in action, as his fingers 
play with the string, along which he has surely projected 
his whole soul to the toy amongst the clouds ? ' Hi ! Hi ! 
Stand aside ! ' * It is of no use, my friends with the nori- 
mon (sedan-chair), you address yourselves to a mere out- 
line of a boy ; the substance is far away above you at the 
end of that string, and cannot hear, call you never so 
loudly.' " 

On a certain day in the year, many huge, brightly- 
coloured objects may be seen floating, or rather wobbling 
over the city. They represent enormous carp-fish, are 
made of thin painted cloth, and are hollow, so that the 
wind fills them and gives them a very lively appearance. 
They usually indicate the happy arrival during the pre- 
ceding year of a male child, but are displayed where a 
family contains boys, though none of them may be re- 
cently born. 

A learned English professor in Tokio somewhat 



50 



Ni7ie Years in Nipon. 



scandalised his portentously dignified colleagues in the 
university precincts, by displaying over his door a very 
large specimen in commemoration of his first-born. It 
defied the breezes of Japan, and the more potent sneers of 
his less fortunate fellows, for an unusually long period. 

In many quiet by- 
streets you may see 
women staining or 
dyeing cloth in the 
open air. It is a very 
simple process, and 
no attempt is made 
to produce " fast " 
colours. Chemicals 
are used also to ex- 
tract the colour in 
patterns. 

It is interesting to 

Woma7i Dyeing. (Japanese Sketch.) pCCp lUtO the VarioUS 

shops as we pass along the busy thoroughfare. The 
floors are covered with a fine kind of grass matting, 
padded underneath, and you have to take off your shoes 
respectfully, or apologize for not doing so, which latter 
form has come to be painfully common amongst " bar- 
barians " from the West. There are all kinds of European 
nick-nacks for sale, or more frequently clever imitations 
of them ; ready-made clothes of latest Parisian fashion, 
fire-engines, patent medicines, scientific apparatus, great 
numbers of a curious new stove invented by a J apanese, 
made of a frothy kind of glassy lava, the iron door 
of which is very appropriately fitted with a common 




Street Scenes. 51 

wooden knob ! Paisley shawls and Brussels carpets ; 
Bass's beer and Epps's cocoa ; ancient suits of armour ; 
decanonised Buddhist saints, and rusty American sewing 
machines. 

The Japanese merchant is not above taking les- 
sons from the despised " hairy foreigner," and there are 
some rare specimens of the Queen's English to be found 
now and again in this realm of literature. Here is a 
veritable one, not at all improved for the sake of effect : — 



NOTICE. 

SHOE MANUFACTURER. 

Design at any Choice. 

The undersigned being engaged long and succeeded 
with their capacity at shoe factory of Isekats, in Tokio ; 
it is now established in my liability at undermentioned 
lot all furnishment will be attended in moderate term with 
good quality. 

A n order is acceptable^ in receive a post, being called upon 
the measure and it will be forwarded in furnish. 

U. INOYA, 

No. 206, 5th St. Motomachi. 

When the foreigner, who is a new arrival, stands for a 
little at a shop window, he is sure to be immediately 
surrounded by a rather big crowd, eager to hear his 
blunders in the language, and to observe how skilfully the 
wily vendor of curios eases him of his paper money. I 
have often thought what a boon it might be to the 
ethnologist were he able by some invisible and instan- 
taneous process to secure facial types by multi-photographs 
like those with which Mr. Dalton has recently so interested 



52 Nine Years in Nipon. 

the scientific world. Well, after all, is that not just what 
caricaturists like Leech and Du Maurier, Caldecott and 
Ralston have done for us in regard to the types of English 
society? No limited number of photographs could give 
us a better idea cf Tommy Atkins than Ralston's few 
strokes convey. And so too one might with skill and true 
artistic intuition ideally combine the untutored concep- 
tions of their race left by native artists. 

Look around at the calm unsmiling and stolidly 
attentive faces which compose the crowd. First there is 
a row of little girls, each with a very uninteresting baby, 
carried pick-a-back, and fastened by a kind of girdle used 
specially for that purpose. The wretched little urchin is 
toasted in the sun all day, and when asleep, as it usually 
is, its poor little noddle hangs over just like a drooping 
poppy bud, and is jerked helplessly about with every 
motion of the playful nurse. Japanese children are not 
usually weaned till about four years of age, and very often 
not then. The youngest children have their heads care- 
fully shaved all over, while those a little older have tassel- 
like portions hanging down at the " four corners," or have 
a monk-like fringe left all round the shaven pate. 

I long ago came to the conclusion that these various 
styles of hair-cutting are clearly survivals from the castes 
of Hinduism, the notion of which symbolism Buddhism, 
however improbable it may appear at first sight, brought 
over from India to the Far East. There are numerous 
examples of a similar kind which cannot be appropriately 
brought forward in this chapter. 

Close beside us there is a group of very slovenly 
infantry soldiers, with coal-scuttle shakoes, unbrushed 



Street Scenes. 



53 



clothes, and badly made foreign shoes, trodden down at 
the heels. Their faces are flushed with wine ; they seem 
disposed to be rude, and carry side arms which they are 
not at all unwilling to use readily when crossed in any 
way. At a short distance, a pair of gentlemanly and 
substantial-looking gens d'armes, with revolvers and 
sabres, are keeping calm eyes on the soldiers. A pair of enor- 
mous black spectacles, accompanying a squat little police- 
man in dark blue, with naval cap adorned with white cotton 
sun-shade, and what looks like a window roller under his 
arm, are glaring fiercely at the crowd, and giving emphasis 
to the frequent gruff command in Japanese to " move on 
there !" 

We obey the order meekly, to the shopkeeper's disgust, 
and turn our eyes to the street again, which is crowded 
with jinrikishas, cavalry, ricketty 'busses of the most 
primitive construction ; neat and well-appointed tramway 
cars ; a rare kago or sedan chair, with a yellow flag carried 
in front, denoting that a case of cholera or small-pox is 

being conveyed to 
the hospital ; water- 
men with buckets 
of water, " full of 
holes," like Paddy's 
stocking, which di- 
vide the misery of 
dormant dust into 
one of flying dust, 
plus mud. These 
men carry their load 
across the shoulder. 




Japanese Waterman. 



by means of a pole laid 



54 Nine Years in Nipon. 

To each end of the pole a bucket is attached, but the 
originahty of the Japanese mode of distributing 
the burden is this — a shorter pole is placed across 
the other shoulder nearly at right angles to the long 
pole, and one end of it is used to lever up the weight on 
one side, the other end being grasped by the free hand. The 
weight is thus thrown more evenly over both sides of the 
body. Immense loads are carried in this way, and with 
great agility, as a certain springiness which aids quick 
walking, is thus imparted. 

A little further along, at a point where the main street 
forks, a great display of some kind is being made. A 
newly-finished building is gaily decorated with flowers 
and flags — not the uniform glare of turkey red with which 
the British householder lavishly resolves to let the world 
know he wishes to be thought happy on some festive 
occasion, not that, but a really graceful design of great 
simplicity. Below the gay streamers, green nodding 
plumes of bamboo and dark pine branches brightened 
with festoons of golden oranges, rises a stately pyramid of 
brand new straw-covered tubs of rice-beer, which a thirsty 
public are invited for the day to partake of freely to their 
heart's content. It is a shop-opening, and in this way 
luck and the good wishes of the community are hoped 
for by the enterprising merchant A good-humoured 
crowd is elbowing its way across the pavement in two 
streams ; one pale and rather solemn, yet eager-eyed with 
some pleasures of hope beaming on their faces ; the other 
flushed, facetious, and rather drowsy. 

Here is something which, I think, is sure to interest a 
new comer. It is a peripatetic cook-shop for children, and 



Street Scenes. 55 

consists of two long complicated lacquer-boxes, slung at 
the ends of a strong pole, and laid across the shoulders in 
the manner already described. The bearer of the 
beneficent burden stops at the corner where the crowd is, 
sets his little charcoal oven fire going in a trice, and very 
soon the clean copper plate which forms the oven is quite 
hot enough to begin business with. A large bowl of sweet 
paste, in a fluid state, forms the chief part of his stock. 
There is soon a group of hungry children — and in Japan, 
as elsewhere, children are always hungry — round the tiny 
stall, purchasing little saucers full of the enticing stuff. 
Each pours his purchase out on the heated copper, form- 
ing such shapes as his own taste or ingenuity may devise, 
and in an instant it is hard, crisp and brown, to be scraped 
off in due time by means of a little spoon with which the 
vendor supplies them. It is really a great treat to watch 
the children at this useful pastime ; the very youngest 
managing his or her property most expertly, and all doing 
their work quietly, courteously and very methodically, 
with amazingly little bumping, driving or brawling. 
These itinerant cooks are usually called letter-toasters 
(monji yaki), because in old times they formed with their 
paste Chinese characters. The thirty odd thousand of 
those useful symbols of thought, did not however present 
sufficient variety for the juveniles of Japan. 

A greater genius still has since stepped upon this mun- 
dane scene. But here I feel it would be almost profane 
to attempt to improve on a description by the late Dr. 
Purcell of the English Legation, which appeared many 
years ago in the columns of the Japan Mail: — "The 
Ameya combines painting and modelling together. He 



56 Nine Yeai's i7i Nip on. 

carries about with him his studio and appliances, and is 
prepared to execute any order, be it never so difficult. 
He'll stick you a bit of his tenacious barley gluten on a 
bamboo joint ; and puff — f — f — f — it's a white glistening 
balloon — pinch it in at the middle, fashion off the mouth, 
draw out a bit for a cord, wind it quickly twice round, 
and back again, tie it into a bow knot, and you have as 
well-shaped a gourd in a few moments as nature ever took 
months to produce. ' Please, sir ! I want a couple of rats 
nibbling a bag of barley.' Ah ! My chubby little master, 
that'll surely puzzle him you think. Not a bit of it. He 
does not even stop to consider how it is to be set about, 
but takes in a twinkling out of drawer No. 2, a lump of 
his plastic material of just the proper size. This he 
kneads, and rolls up again, and when of the right consist- 
ency dusts it with rice flower, to prevent it clinging to his 
fmgers, and then, giving it a pyramidal shape, pinches out 
a bit at each side of the apex, snips out with scissors a 
pair of ears, lengthens out the snout, pulls out a tail a- 
piece, fashions the cone in the middle into a bag, a couple 
of dots for the eyes of the rats, a streak of red paint 
underneath them, a bar of blue below that again, a puff of 
gold dust and — ' Now my little boy, where's your coin ? 
Your rats are finished.' 

" To try and puzzle the old artist by devising difficult 
commissions for him to execute, is a favourite game with 
the youngsters. He is equal to any call on his ingenuity, 
however, whether he be required to fashion a monkey 
swinging by one hand from a branch, whilst it encircles a 
little one with its disengaged arm ; a pair of rats in deadly 
combat with their tails as weapons ; or a frog on its hind 



Street Scenes. 57 

legs, daintily pointing his toes and shading himself from 
the sun under a mushroom which he uses as an umbrella : 
— no flight of imagination seems too high for him. The 
thought once conceived, his execution of it is marvellously- 
rapid." 

I have often watched artists of this kind, and the above 
description is very true to fact. Sometimes the aineya 
indulges in loftier flights by way of advertisement, and I 
saw one quickly fashion a bouquet of bright coloured 
flowers and golden cereals, of some artistic merit apart 
from the narrow limitations the vehicle imposed on his 
skill. 

Another very modest class of artists may be seen 
seated on the curb - stones, offering to dash off fine 
sepia, indian ink or water colour drawings — often with 
much grace and felicity — for little more than the price of 
the paper ; while a third set are engaged in cutting out of 
boxwood private seals in the ancient Chinese characters just 
as we have our monograms. Great antiquarian interest is 
attached to those humble engravers, for we see there being 
repeated the veritable first step the Chinese took, long 
before the western world was yet awake, in the art of 
printing. The characters were first engraved singly, and 
the ink used in those old times was simply brick dust, 
mixed with water — rice water probably. Does this not 
carry us back to the engraved brick tablets of still earlier 
times ? I think that possibly the discovery that one of 
these tablets when accidentally pressed upon left an im- 
print of reddish brick dust may have been the very first 
step in typography. 

The barbers' shops are numerous in all the large towns. 

D 



58 Nine Years in Nipon. 

The honest citizen loves to have a clean shave and the 
latest gossip, albeit the barbers recently received solemn 
official instructions to report to government all they might 
hear of an interesting nature — a regulation which gives a 
powerful stimulus to one's imagination regarding the 
capacity of government generally. A clean shave in 
Japan is rather an extensive operation ; it includes a 
broad strip of the scalp over which is folded and knotted 
a column of stiffly glued hair, like a little door handle. 
The whole arrangement reminded me always of a Scotch 
curling stone. The ears and nostrils, outside and in, are 
carefully scraped with the razor. The children require a 
good deal of attention also, as I have already hinted, and 
many are the variations of style in hair dressing. Many 
now adopt our western ideas as to hair cutting, and I 
have been consulted by a lofty official as to the best way 
to develope a pair of good " Dundreary " whiskers. The 
usual barber's sign is our own plate and pole, but Japan- 
ese ingenuity has far outstripped our sober knights of the 
scissors and razor. The primary significance of the sym- 
bol which raises the art to the dignity of a branch of sur- 
gery has been ignored, and the pole has been looked upon 
simply as a vehicle for the display of gorgeous combina- 
tions oi penki (oil paint). In place of our simple band of 
tape used by the chirurgeon of old, to stanch bleeding after 
the proper number of ounces had been withdrawn from 
the patient's peccant veins, we have rings and other orna- 
mental displays of colouring, while the flat rounded knob 
at the top, which the victim had to grasp may, in Japan, 
become a spike or even a star. 

Such facts may seem too trivial to record, but to the 



Street Scenes. 59 

archaeologist nothing is common which seems to throw 
light on the workings of the human mind as displayed in 
the evolution of symbolism. 

From barber to beer-shop is an easy step. The national 
drink of Japan is a fermented decoction of rice called sake^ 
of slightly intoxicating properties, and not very pleasant 
flavour. Wines, white and red, are now made from the 
juice of the grape, and English and German beer, not to 
mention the appropriate labels, are manufactured in 
Japan. Even in former days before brandy and 
other strong foreign drinks became naturalised a rather 
potent kind of spirit was distilled from rice. The 
wares are contained in bright clean tubs labelled 
with such titles as " The blooming flower ; " " Great gold- 
fish," with suitable trade mark ; " The good luck-peony," 
or " The wine of three virtues," warming the skin, filling 
the belly, and soothing to sleep. Curiously enough, the 
ordinary Japanese wine-shop displays a bush (of sugi^ a 
kind of cedar), as a sign, which recals our old saying, 
" good wine needs no bush." Whether the custom, like 
the use of the barber's pole, came over from the West long 
ago, no one can at present tell. 

Here is a literally exact copy of a sign-board in the 
city which helps to indicate the rapid advance being made 
in civilization : — 

A Brief Account of Nindoshiu. 



This is an intoxicating liquol made from alcohol 
mixed with other things and flavoured with honey- 
suckles flower. It has a very sweet taste and is somewhat 
strong, it resembles whiskey and is good for any one — It 



6o Nine Years in Nip07i. 

has an effect of exciting the mind and promoting the 
health of withered persons. In 1878 it has obtained a 
high reputation in the International Exhibition of Paris. 
Ladies and gentlemen we wish you would take a cup of 
it and know what we say is quite true." 

Not being disposed to rank as " withered persons " just 
yet, we pass by to look for something else of interest. 
Many of the back lanes of this great city are alive 
with poultry. They are mostly of a small, rather elegant 
breed, the cocks having magnificent tail feathers, which 
curve gracefully. The best of them now fetch good prices 
from fanciers in Europe and America. 

The stoats make inroads upon them at night, however, 
and indeed it is not unusual to meet one of these animals 
in a back lane, even at midday. Foxes also, from the 
sacredness of their claims, are allowed the run of the city, 
but are much more rarely seen abroad. 

Here and there you find fish-shops, which add to the 
sale of more perishable stock, that of live gold and silver 
carp. Those may be seen partitioned of into separate 
troughs, according to price, etc., in all stages of growth 
and development. Some may be surprised to hear that 
young gold-fish are almost all quite black. Many varie- 
ties have been cultivated by breeders through careful 
selection of promising types, and some of those varieties 
fetch fabulous sums — if they are only ugly enough ! 

I was consulted as to a disease which was spreading 
amongst the stock of a large salesman of carp. It had 
been caused by the voracity of a tiny parasite, the Argulus 
foliaceiis which, almost contrary to the usual phenomena 
of parasitism, possesses a highly specialised and beautifully 



Street Scenes. 6 1 

complex structure, transparent as crystal. It is one of the 
most beautiful objects I have ever seen in the microscope, 
and may be kept under observation for a long time. It 
has two powerful suckers by which it fastens itself to its 
victim, and then unsheathing a long, hollow, rapier-like 
probe of extreme sharpness, it drives it into the unhappy 
gold-fish, and thereby sucks no small advantage. It is 
also armed with a series of powerful hooks, and by means 
of its flat, fringed, oar-like limbs, it can propel itself at 
will from one feeding-ground to another. 

The cleansing of the streets is greatly assisted by armies 
of large, raven-beaked crows (Corvtis japonensis^ Bp.)^ and 
rather kingly-looking black-eared kites (Milvtis melanotis^ 
F. & S.) which may be seen in myriads, on a calm day, 
circling at a great height above the city. They have a 
curious guttural, tremulous cry, similar to that of the kites 
about Calcutta, to whose habits they very closely conform. 
A butcher in our vicinity used to amuse himself by throw- 
ing tit-bits to the kites, which caught them with great 
accuracy, although their movements were often tumultuous 
and clumsy. Sometimes they are caught by means of a 
piece of meat placed in the centre of a running loop, 
which is drawn tight when the bird alights. I saw one of 
them trapped in this way by a boy. After it had taken 
to flight and had gone the full length of its tether, it fell 
suddenly to the ground like a stone, its pinions remaining 
all the time fully outstretched, and its tail expanded. It 
remained in the same position, looking at the group that 
surrounded it with unabashed dignity — fallen, but as proud 
as Lucifer. 



62 



Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER V. 

Life in Tokio. 

New Friends — Sir Harry Parkes — Mine Inn and its Master — A Hyper- 
Calvinistic Parrot — Plague of Frogs and Students — New Mode of 
"Running a Restaurant" — The "Great Workman" and his Little 
Ways — Charm against Leaks — Pic-nicand Fireworks — A New Mode of 
Signalling — Charm for Finding Drowned Bodies — A Japanese Tower 
of Siloam — Christmas in the Far East. 




N arriving in the city we were not long in 
making acquaintances, our first call being 
on Bishop Williams of the American Epis- 
copal Church, who received us very kindly. 
The Bishop — a model of scholarly Christian 
modesty — is now the oldest missionary in 
Japan, having arrived in 1859, at the opening 
of the treaty ports. We had an introduction, amongst 
others, to Mr. Henry Dyer, Principal of the Imperial 
College of Engineering, whose hospitality we enjoyed for 
some time. The college was just getting into excellent 
working order, and the energetic and far-seeing Principal 
was still busy carrying out schemes of enlargement, and 
establishing practical workshops of all kinds affiliated to 
the central institution — a plan which was afterwards ex- 
tended to embrace a very large portion of the circle of 
artistic and scientific industry. 

Indeed, Japan had very thoroughly wakened up to her 
dire need of light and leading in all such departments of 



Life in To Ho. 63 

practical usefulness, and hence it became possible for able 
men who knew their own minds to carry out great plans 
for education and other things, almost by a stroke of the 
pen. Now, however, there are many efficient and even 
distinguished native young engineers in Japan, who have 
literally nothing to do. Time will mend this condition, 
perhaps ; but much capital is needed to carry out the im- 
provements—the roads, railways, and harbours of which 
the government know very well the importance. Since 
Mr. Dyer's return to this country the college h^sH5^een 
under the genial guidance of a distinguished^ scientist. 
Dr. Divers, and is nobly sustaining its reputation for 
original and genuine work. 

As a loyal subject of the Queen, I paid my respects to 
His Excellency Sir Harry S. Parkes, whom I found very 
accessible, as he takes considerable interest in the philan- 
thropic efforts of his countrymen. No one would ever 
suppose that Sir Harry is one of the oldest foreign resi- 
dents in the Far East. 

He is a fair auburn-haired, fine-looking, unmistakeably 
E7zglish, man, not very tall, just in his prime, and re- 
minded me of George Eliot's description of Grandcourt's 
appearance. He has, of course, the clever little diploma- 
tic stutter which belongs to official Englishmen generally, 
and knows exactly when to leave a sentence unfinished, 
or to wind it off in a rapid series of little inarticulate 
coughs, which may be interpreted in any one of half- 
a-dozen ways, and usually wrongly. Sir Harry, in 
spite of one or two errors, has been of vast service 
to the young Empire of New Japan, while no one has 
suspected him of being inattentive to the commercial 



^4 Nine Years in Nipon. 

interests of his own countrymen. He is capable of taking 
a broad cosmopolitan view of affairs, but is essentially and 
typically a British minister ; and we could not have in 
China — where he now is — at the present crisis in her his- 
tory, an officer more thoroughly alive and intelligent to- 
wards our own interests, or more likely to serve in a 
broad and lasting manner the higher interests of that vast 
and, I believe, most friendly empire. 

We soon took up our quarters in the apology for 
a hotel which then existed in the " foreign concession." * 
The owner— peace be to his once rubicund visaee 

o 

— was an Irish-American, whom evil-tongued rumour 
credited with having suddenly left Shanghai, after some 
one had died of a dose of lead improperly administered. 
Apart from the absurdity of leaving such a port as 
Shanghai hastily, under such circumstances, as an 
extenuation, at least, I may be allowed honestly to testify 
that he was never able to hit any of the neighbours' dogs, 
even at short range, during my period of observation, 
and he used to practise pretty often — before dinner time. 
When he was fairly asleep, which he generally was 
about midday, it is fair to state that he seemed disposed 
to live quietly and peaceably with his guests and neigh- 
bours. The same, however, could hardly be said of a 
parrot of hyper-calvinistic tendencies which he possessed, 
and which never seemed to sleep at all, and whose conversa- 
tion on Saturday night and early on Sunday morning, when 
billiards and beer were in great request, was rather loud 



*The very limited territory attached to each treaty port on which 
foreigners may build is so called. 



Life in Tokio. 65 

than edifying. Its frequent and vigorous condemnation 
of the company in the strongest of pulpit language, was 
usually greeted with hoarse roars of drunken laughter 
sufficient to drive away any possibility of associating 
the holy day with rest and peace. 

By-and-bye we succeeded in securing at an exorbitant 
rent a little barrack-like wooden building, erected,.! think, 
for some French soldiers, the chief objection to which was 
a plague of frogs. They were " fat and full of sap," and 
seemed never to be happy imless when getting under one's 
feet. At night they kept the sour reedy swamp which 
was honoured with the title of " compound," vocal with 
their hoarse paeans. Here sonie doctors' apprentices, thirst- 
ing for Western lore, scented me out from afar, and 
would patiently appear at break of day, tapping gently at 
our bed-room door, or, peering in at the open front and 
back windows, would salute us with a very deferential 
ohayo (good morning). This ought no doubt to have been 
very pleasant from a social point of view, but it takes a 
little while to acclimatize one's self to new phases of man- 
ners. Patients soon followed in daily growing numbers, 
and for a long time, till my medical work had been fully 
organised in suitable premises, neither my wife nor I knew 
what privacy was. The surroundings soon told on us 
both pretty severely. 

After several unsuccessful efforts had been made, the 
foreign consuls agreed to ask the Japanese government to 
allow a sale of the land assigned for the purpose by treaty, 
and we got a promise from them to do so in the following 
year. Meanwhile, through a Japanese Christian, we had 
already been able to rent the buildings of the extinct 



66 Nine Years in Nipon. 

" Cosmopolitan Restaurant," a rather pretentious edifice 
seated on the bank of a romantic artificial lake. It had to 
be taken down and rebuilt on another site with many 
alterations. It is an amusing thing to hear of one in Japan 
buying an eligible family residence with fine wooded 
policies, and to see the stately mansion tottering along on 
a platform resting on barrows, to the inspiring groans of 
a body of half-naked but tattoed carpenters, while it is 
followed, perhaps, by a nodding grove of solemn cypress 
or gloomy pine trees ; but something like this you may 
often see in Tokio. And yet many things that seem 
strange to us in Japan may have been quite familiar to 
our ancestors. In Henry if.'s time it was decreed that 
the house of the individual who harbours a heretic shall 
be carried out of the town and burned. 

Stilly more remarkable is the resemblance which the 
framework of an ordinary Japanese house bears to that 
of an English one of the olden times. According to the 
History of the Preston Guilds English houses, like those in 
Japan, were formed of a wooden framework, the interstices 
of which were formed of clay mixed with straw. 
Each piece of wood in the framework was usually 
tenoned fitted into a mortice, and fixed by a wooden 
peg. The framework was put together by the builder 
before it was taken to the site. The corresponding 
parts were also numbered, just as we find them in Japan 
at the present day, and the rest of the description fits almost 
word for word. Sir Rutherford Alcock, in his Art and 
Art Industries of Japan (p. i6), ascribes the want of 
architecture in Japan to the instability of the soil. But 
earthquakes here are not, so far as I can find, so much 



Life in Tokio. Gj 

more common or more severe than in Italy, where archi- 
tecture, on the contrary, has always attained a very high 
state of development. Still, the frequency of earthquakes 
and their pretty general distribution over the country, 
may well be supposed to have had some deterrent effect, 
as hybrid Buddhism has in other countries reared grand 
edifices of a solid and abiding character. 

The daiku, or carpenter (literally " great workman "), is 
usually dressed in tight pants of blue cotton, a short 
blouse, a girdle, blue cotton socks, and straw sandals. 
One is reminded here, too, of our own past, and the cos- 
tume is exceedingly like that worn by what, I suppose, 
were Anglo-Saxon workmen about the time of the Nor- 
man conquest. The latter, as ancient tapestries illustra- 
tive of the period show, seem also to have gone about 
their work in a somewhat similar way to the Japanese 
carpenter of to-day, who uses his feet to steady the plank 
he is sawing, and sits down deliberately to his work. As 
the great toe is free, a " finger " — if the term be allowable 
— being made for it in the sock, a certain firmness of 
grasp is maintained. The daiku also cuts with the saw 
on the pull stroke, and so the blade does not buckle. 
This method, I believe, gives good results with fine " key- 
hole " and other thin and narrow saws, but for common 
work the weight of the body is necessary, and it is also 
said to be easier to saw to line by our own method. 

The carpenters are reputed to be afraid of the god of 
metal. Certainly, they use his products rather badly. 
We could never, for instance, get them to put in a screw- 
nail by any other process than driving it in by main force 
with a hammer. It was of no use to apply the counsel 



68 Nine Years in Nipon. 

the butcher gave to good Tom Pinch — " Meat must be 
humoured, not druv," and so right smash went the biggest 
screw-nail into the finest piece of wood-work. 

It was amusing to see those nimble w^orkmen, whom I 
had daily to superintend, running up the light scaffold- 
ings which are of pine, or sometimes even of flexible bam- 
boo. They were almost as agile as monkeys, and seemed 
to me to grasp with the whole foot, as hard-shoed races 
cannot do. Very seldom do they fall, and judging from 
my own experience as a surgeon, they do not often hurt 
themselves severely, even when falling from a consider- 
able height Indeed, their great temperance — as com- 
pared with our own workmen — is largely the cause of 
their comparative immunity from severe injuries, along 
with the fact that few buildings are made of stone, and 
none are lofty except " pagodas " and temples. Their 
superior nimbleness, however, is, I am sure, one element 
in the case. 

At the ends of the ridge-tiles a tinted plaster ornament, 
like the conventional curly foam-crested waves of Japanese 
art, was wrought to form a charm against the entrance of 
water. So the tilers said, at all events ; but I formed a 
suspicion that perhaps the motive might be read the other 
way, as the roof always leaked dreadfully just about that 
very spot. 

The 20th of July being the great festival of the Kawa- 
biraki, or " opening of the river," and a general holiday in 
the city, we made a pic-nic party, including some very 
prettily-dressed Japanese girls attending a mission-school, 
and sailed to the festive scene in the gondola of Japan — 
a miniature unpainted copy of Noah's ark, clean and 



Life ill Tokio. 6g 

generally very compact, as the cramp in your unaccustomed 
legs will soon enable you to testify. The boatman sculls 
from the side while standing upright The broad and 
rather dingy river was quite livel}^ with similar crafis 
similarly laden, and the tinkle of the inevitable sarnisen — 
a kind of guitar — was " sounding sounding " everywhere. 

On holiday and festive occasions such as this, young 
maidens dress in loose, prettily-figured robes, with great 
wide necks. The folds are always made studiously grace- 
ful, as even our own artists have learned, and books are 
sold showing the folds and attitudes, considered to be 
aesthetic and fashionable. 

The outer robe is fastened with a stiff, plain silk or, it 
may be, richly brocaded girdle tied in a careful and pro- 
minent bow behind. The robe opens at the bosom, dis- 
closing the well-powdered neck, and the parallel edges of 
a series of pale-coloured vests made of the most delicate 
crape silks, and with skilfully contrasted hues. A medi- 
cal man has opportunities of discovering many little 
secrets about dress ; and just as the lofty man about town, 
when knocked over by a plebeian cab, has been found by 
his horrified medical attendant to indulge in "dickies," so 
I may be allowed here to whisper that those costly strata 
of silk garments which are the wonder and admiration of 
the unsophisticated foreigner, are, in modern times, simply 
very narrow folds of the required material laid together 
so as to produce a fictitious appearance of great expendi- 
ture with the minimum of outlay. 

During the day fireworks are let off, which form cloudy 
patterns high up in the air and give forth paper prizes of 
curious shapes, in pursuit of which crowds of city urchins 



70 



Nine Years in Nipon. 



may be seen rushing frantically with their loins girded. 
Those smoke-clouds are often tinted beautifully, and 
assume fantastic shapes. The substance used to produce 
the effect is the dried dung of the she wolf — for wolves still 
abound In the northern parts of the empire. The powder 



SEA OF. 
JAP- 




Oshima 



PACIFIC 
OC£AN 



is said to cause a dense white smoke which hangs together 
for an unusual time. I have thought that a similar kind 
of fireworks might be used for military or other signalling 
through the day, and might often also give valuable 
indications as to the direction of currents of air in 




Life in Tokio. 71 

balooning, or for general meteorological purposes. I have 
seen them break high above low-lying fleecy clouds in the 
city, and to take a different course from the latter, thus 
clearly indicating two currents of wind. 

After the " river-opening," which was first celebrated in 
Kioto the capital of the country, and still is with more 
meaning than in Tokio, summer comes in apace, and 
during the twenty-one days following, the people used to 
leave the hot and dusty city for the cool breezy banks of 
the Sumida, which, in the upper reaches, are lined with 
tea-houses, looking into the river, their verandahs almost 
overhanging the once limpid and wholesome stream. 
When passing along any of the narrow streets in a neigh- 
bourhood where the population is dense, every room 
seemed to be filled with perspiring citizens, nearly naked, 
and lying outstretched, fanning themselves or trying to 
persuade themselves that they were asleep. At night, 
during the extremely hot season, the people seem to keep 
walking in little parties about the streets, which are kept 
moist and as cool as may be by the stagnant water from 
the gutters being sprinkled about from time to time. I 
am not sure that the effect is at all unhealthy. The 
samisens are kept also going all night to tremulous vocal 
accompaniments. 

This period might perhaps be called the dog-days, 
but I have never known a single case of a mad dog 
in Japan, although I have had to treat numberless 
cases of bites from angry dogs. Turkey is said also 
to enjoy a like immunity, and this has been ascribed to 
the prevalence of a certain tick which greatly infests the 

gs there. Strangely enough, a similar parasite is one 



^2 Nine Years in Nipon. 

of the greatest afflictions to dog-fanciers in Japan, but I 
am not prepared to give any opinion on the relation of the 
two facts. Our housefactor's children got bitten by white 
mice, about this time, and the sorrowing relatives told me 
that in Japan this was always fatal. I did what I could 
for them, but my advice was not closely followed. One 
child quickly died; the other suffered for more than a 
year, but seemed to be recovering when last under my 
observation. The disease, which was thought to be allied 
to hydrophobia, seemed to be well known in Japan, but I 
never saw another case of the same kind. 

The canals near us were usually lively in the hot 
days with schoolboys bathing, and frequently there 
would be a shout and a sudden rush of people ; an 
hour or so afterwards a pale little limp and lifeless 
corpse would be dragged out, still clutching firmly a 
tuft of chara or other water-weed, under the cruel coils 
of which the swiftly out-rushing tide had dragged the 
poor child. Often with sore heart I tried to get some- 
thing done to prevent those pitiful accidents, as people 
called them, but almost in vain. On one occasion the 
body could not at all be found. The bystanders, though 
not for lack of advice, were at their wits' ends, when I 
heard some solemn old wiseacre propose that the excellent 
old charm of placing a cock on a raft and setting it afloat 
should get a trial. Of course the cock must needs crow 
when it came to the spot. Some men waded into the 
canal, pushing the raft about in all directions, and at last 
baffled in their project, let it go. By-and-by it got 
aground, and master chanticleer, in coi^mptuous silence, 
leaped nimbly ashore amidst the loud ^^tairean laughter 



/ 



Life in Tokio. 73 

of the crowd. The wise propounder of the scheme had 
meanwhile quietly slipped away. I must candidly add 
that the raft had never been pushed across the spot where 
the body was afterwards found lying, in fact nearly 
opposite the place where the raft had stuck fast. 

On many of those hot days happily there blew a strong 
cooling breeze from the sea, which made life tolerable. 
The air was laden with fine salt spray, and at night great 
indigo-coloured banks of cloud regularly massed them- 
selves over the hills to the north-west of Tokio. Sheets 
of silent violet lightning would keep flitting over them till 
a very late hour, — the forked lightning being invisible 
behind the outer stratum of vapour, and the distance 
being too great for the thunder to be heard. This never 
ceased to be a very impressive phenomenon in spite of its 
regularity. Sometimes violent thunderstorms burst near 
us, and once, while at dinner, a terrible crash led me to 
look out to the river, where I saw that the tall mast of a 
junk, the most prominent in the bay as the storm swept 
towards Tokio, had been split right down from top to heel. 
I got a little boat and pulled off to see if medical help were 
needed. No one had been hurt, but in the hold the grim old 
skipper was bowing his head solemnly, while with clasped 
hands he muttered some prayers or incantations. He 
seemed greatly annoyed to find his vessel the object of so 
much sudden curiosity, for crowds of idle gazers had put 
off from shore, and many were commenting pleasantly on 
the probable wickedness of those on board, just as they 
would have done in a good Jewish or Christian country, a 
matter which furnished me with a theme for some whole- 
some and, I trust, edifying remarks. 

E 



74 Nine Years in Nipon. 

Tokio was not without its gaieties, and the visit of some 
prince or ex-president, now and then, found the sombre 
capital ready to indulge in a great feast of lanterns — and 
champagne. The preparations for General Grant's 
reception were on an unusually lavish scale. The shop- 
keepers told us gravely that they had received strict orders 
from the government not to part with any soap or tooth- 
brushes meanwhile, lest those useful articles should be 
required for official purposes during the work of festivities. 
The outlay at last became so extravagant that a serious 
remonstrance was sent in anonymously to government on 
the subject. Indeed the feeling was generally entertained 
by respectable citizens that the irresponsible expenditure 
of money raised by taxation must henceforth be carefully 
watched. I believe this little episode, which did not attract 
very much attention, has been felt to mark an important 
stage in the history of Japanese political progress. Whether 
the soap was all used or not remains doubtful, but it was 
whispered that some official hands remained pretty dirty 
after all ! What I have to say of Japanese amusements 
will be said farther on. 

Christmas was a great time for hugging memories of the 
lands we came from. The amount of home feeling which 
so many " Anglo-Saxon " children claiming origin from 
both sides the " mill-pond," excited in the hearts of case- 
hardened old residents, was very touching and beautiful,, 
and, I am sure, altogether purifying in its influence. 

While might we sigh with the laureate — 

" We live within the stranger's land, 

And strangely falls our Christmas eve " — 

the_^eason itself was usually cold, clear, and bracing — 



Life in Tokio. 75 

often a bright blue sky above us, while the hard ground 
rung beneath our feet, and under the shade of green bam- 
boos skaters might be seen gliding on good ice merrily. 
On a wet day the rows of hooded jinrikishas, grouped in 
some lantern-lit compound shadowed with sub-tropical 
foliage, did not suggest an English Christmas at all till 
the little fair-haired ones emerged from the dingy oil- 
paper covers of their vehicles in gay evening-dresses, as an 
accomplished lady friend once remarked — "just like so 
many butterflies from the chrysalis." 



•j^ ' Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A Consultation i7t the Hills. 

A Rembrandtesque Scene — Novel Style of Drag — Daybreak on the 
Plains — A Remorseful Knight — Wayside Tea-houses — A Formidable 
Ferry — Buddha in Bronze — Presbyterian Church in the Hills — Dining 
in Public — A Doctor of the Old School — Scotch Service amongst Silk 
— Utility of Yawning. 

ONE day, in the summer of 1879, having had a 
sudden call to go into the interior to see an aged 
silk grower in consultation with his native doctor, I found 
myself at midnight, after a hard day's work, drowsily con- 
templating a scene which might have sprung to life from 
Rembrandt's canvas. A quaint, old-fashioned Japanese 
hostelry, outside of which lay, as if they were never to 
move again, a dusty, dingy, beggarly array of much be- 
painted and bepatched vehicles, on which had accumu- 
lated the dust and mud of every journey they had made 
since first they issued in coats of bright scarlet some time 
after the dawn of civilization from the builder's yard. I 
soon noticed that there were others like myself, with 
strong faith and small bundles, ready to commit their 
precious souls to those frail tenements of clay. A fat old 
woman, with strong Tory tendencies, much local know- 
ledge of routes, coaches, and hours — one never speaks of 
minutes in travelling by coach in Japan, and only of hours 
as a figure of speech — and a formidable array of square 
dark green bandboxes of split bamboo, for the care and 



A Consultation in the Hills. 77 

transit of which roads, drivers, and waiters, seemed to 
have been specially called into existence ; a wizened' 
irresolute looking old man, with a " guid gaun " law suit 
in the city, who was always nervously preparing for a 
smoke, but had perhaps run out of tobacco ; a group 
of portly people in "silk," whose talk was too pro- 
fessionally technical to be well understood by a foreigner ; 
a few morbidly well-behaved, nicely-dressed, and unemo- 
tional children; a rather merry, red-faced old boy, 
with a foreign hat on, who had many hospitable city 
friends to say sayonara (good-bye) to him ; and a quiet, 
important, clean-shaved man (a local dignitary) with a 
piping voice ;— such was the group of intending travellers 
that seemed to gravitate around one frail vehicle— crankier 
than any of the others it seemed to me— by the solemnis- 
ing influence of one common destiny. At last 12.30, our 
hour for leaving, was indicated by my infallible pocket- 
chronometer ; but silence— broken only by the abortive 
attempts of the old man to start his pipe— reigned around. 
Now and again a nonchalant stable-boy, with, dark blue 
skin-tights, would appear with a paper lantern that sent 
gross caricatures of us all dancing like fiends on a back- 
ground of ruddy fire, while the varied features of each 
face were emphasised with such deep shadows that you 
felt some great tragedy was in preparation. At length 
there was a decided stir in the courtyard, the clatter of 
hoofs and the sweet accents of irate grooms broke upon 
our grateful ears, while the erst silent streets began to 
echo the hoarse bray of approaching bugles, in clumsy 
juvenile and tentative strains that would have driven mad 
an English guard of the good old coaching days. Two 



yS Nine Years in Nipon. 

raw-backed and bare-ribbed ponies were yoked to the 
crazy vehicle, one of whose wheels was really not quite 
circular, and dispensed with the need for springs, of which 
however there were home-made substitutes. The climax, 
however, was reached in the drag. My object in this work 
is to pourtray Japan as it is * and not to invent amus- 
ing things. Well, it consisted simply of an old Wellington 
boot of tough texture, which had probably seen much previ- 
ous service, pressed against the wheel by means of a wooden 
pin, round which, with the boot, a rope was twisted. Like 
Captain Cuttle's watch, it had the disadvantage of 
requiring somewhat frequent adjustment, but thus aided it 
did its work marvellously well. The vehicle in front of 
us, going so far the same way, came to grief outside of the 
city, and we had to give the good-natured occupants some 
help. There was no grumbling and no blame cast on any 
one. After hours of hard galloping — our horses being 
changed every seven miles or so — and rough, painful 
jolting through sleeping suburban hamlets and gloomy 
woods, we began at last to have faint glimpses of the 
landscape, over which the soft grey dawn was now shed- 
ding a cold silvery radiance, that seemed to owe nothing 
to the sun. We were dashing along a vast and fertile 
plain through which roll several broad branches of the 
grand river which pours itself into the bay of Yedo, at 
the city which used to bear that name. 

This great flat, loamy, garden-like expanse, was gleam- 
ing with golden patches of the sesamum orientate — very 



* The railway, since the period above mentioned, has been carried along 
the route herein described. 



A Consultation in the Hills. 79 

like the mustard plant — which filled the air with a some- 
what heavy but agreeable odour not unlike honey. 
Sometimes a bright purple flush of wild clover broke in 
strikingly through the monotonous check-tartan of green 
and yellow ; or a pool of still water, dotted with broad 
lotus leaves, or quivering with frogs, flashed its glory 
through broad blades of blooming iris. Everywhere the 
poor, hard-wrought peasants, in preposterous umbrella- 
like hats, and literally thatched with straw which made 
them look when stooping exactly like porcupines, were 
damming up runnels of water for their rice fields, or trying 
to urge sluggish and most unpicturesque oxen to drag a 
wooden plough through the stiff clods. It was curious to 
observe that this most primitive-looking engine was 
exactly like the ancient pekton of the Greeks, yet telegraph- 
posts were near enough for the wearied oxen to rub them- 
selves on, while not many miles away you might see the 
steam plough at work. Such is modern Japan ! 

Here and there a snowy egret, in sharp and dazzling 
contrast to the dark ooze of the paddy-fields, might be 
seen poking its long greenish yellow beak into the 
mud, through which the first green promise of harvest 
was timidly peeping. The whole atmosphere, and even 
the damp dewy ground itself, seemed to vibrate with the 
cheerful crek-kek-kek-kex of the frogs — an old and heart- 
inspiring music, which has never wanted admirers. 

As the purple hills seemed to rise and draw nearer to 
us, we came at last to the end of this part of our journey ; 
for the carriage road ended, for us at least, at a notable 
little place called Kumagai, where a fair was being held 
when we arrived. The town is named after a famous 



So Nine Year's An Nip on. 

warrior of ancient times who, by the rules of warfare, had 
to behead a tender young captive who had shown great 
gallantry. In bitter remorse, and with an utter disgust to- 
wards his profession, the grim old soldier afterwards shaved 
his 'head and became a priest, famous for learning and 
sanctity. The festival which we witnessed was held in his 
memory. After a very short pause here we were off again, 
this time in the now world-famed jinrikisha, — rattling 
along narrow horse paths, between rigged fields of tender 
green buckwheat or Indian corn ; resting now and then 
for a minute or two at one of the houses by the wayside. 
These were always musical with the soft tinkling of glass 
ornaments which convey most grateful suggestions of rest 
and coolness to the ears of the wearied, hot, and dust- 
stained traveller. There is usually a wooden bench 
placed under a spreading vine or cucumber tree. At one 
of them I got a little tea-girl to warm up a bottle of cold 
soup, which thoughtful hands had stowed away for me. 
It was put into a very fishy, but otherwise clean copper, 
which always gives a nice metallic flavour to Western 
dishes, and I dined sumptuously — the sweets coming first, 
then soup, fish being served last of all. 

Off again, now through drizzling and depressing rain, 
which increased at last into a thunderous downpour, 
making the roads anything but pleasant or easy to travel 
over. Two rivers, now terribly swollen by the rain, had 
to be crossed, and this was done by means of flat and frail 
boats, worked by pole-oars of strong, but alarmingly flex- 
ible bamboo. A rope of rudely twisted straw was 
stretched between the banks — some parts of which had 
been recently washed away — and was used by the boatman 



A Consultation in the Hills. 



8i 



to propel his scow by grasping it hand over hand. At 
one point the risk seemed terrible ; but after a hard and 
painful struggle, we landed safely on the other side. One 
of those torrents is lined by huge ruddy-purple boulders 
from the famous volcano called Asama Yama, whose 
cloud-wrapped peak, from which the whitish yellow smoke 
of continual burning rises in slow curling wreaths, is an 
object of most impressive grandeur. 




A short walk through field-paths, embanked with 
homely stone " dykes," and crossed by a thousand streams 
fretted by tiny water-wheels and shaded by brakes of the 
slim and tapering bamboo, — over which the magnificent 
wistaria hung its pale lavender festoons of drooping blos- 
soms — brought us to the mountain town of Kiriu, where 
my patient lived. It is a solid comfortable-looking 
place, with a well-made street sloping mountainwards, 
and claims as its "parish church" a dignified old temple, 
in the wide court of which the calm-faced image of 
Buddha rears in bronze its majestic height, from a granite 
pedestal, resting on finely chiselled lotus leaves. In the 
background there is an extensive grave-yard, filled with 
costly and richly carved stones, lichen-stained and moss- 
grown, shaded from the sun by many lofty trees of long 



•82 Nine Years in Nip on. 

growth. One of those trees is fully six feet in diameter, 
and must, I suppose, have put forth its first tiny rootlets 
about the time of our Cromwell. 

The people in Kiriu seemed all* to be engaged in the 
silk trade in one way or another, and had a wonderfully 
well-to-do appearance. I at once called on the pastor of 
the Presbyterian (native) Church, and was happy to find 
that he was an old Tokio friend of mine. After some 
talk we went through mud and rain to see the patient. 
His house was on the hillside, and was approached 
through two broad high-walled courts, with large outer 
buildings, in which spinning, weaving, and the various 
other operations of silk culture might be seen busily going 
on. Many tiresome but most courteous preliminaries 
having been gone through, I was taken to see the poor old 
sufferer, across a broad court-yard lying in deep water, for 
the rain still fell in torrents. After prescribing, I had a 
long and interesting talk with him ; and then, tired and 
hungry, laid myself down on the clean soft straw-matted 
floor of a quaint little room which was assigned to me. 

A Japanese meal is quite a curiosity even to the 
accustomed foreigner, because you never know what may 
be served up. Sometimes the sweetest-looking crape 
paper napkins are given to you. They are, of course, only 
used once, and a custom so pleasant might well be imitated 
at home. They are far from costly. I have never 
enjoyed stewed monkey yet, but it was a favourite dish in 
Japan a few years ago. Recent Darwinian teaching has, 
perhaps, led to a recoil from such cannibalism ! I don't 
know how others feel in such circumstances, but hungry 
as I was, it was difficult to enjoy food under the alert and 



A Consultation in the Hills. 83 

inquiring eyes of a polite crowd of Japanese. My 
prehensile operations with knife and fork began to appear, 
to myself at least, unbearably vulgar and absurd. While 
I was finishing with some chocolate, in came the old family 
physician, who, since the new regime, no longer wears his 
sword, which was intended, I suppose, to convey the idea 
of professional dignity and destructiveness. 

The old gentleman did not seem quite pleased to find 
his preserves poached upon, and we had a little fencing in 
which he came off well, having read Western books with 
some care. His conceit was thoroughly national, but had 
not a very solid foundation. A suitable opportunity 
occurring, I quickly but firmly told him aloud, with the 
publicity he had courted, what had best be done, and 
prescribed some well known remedies. He had not heard 
of them evidently, but tried to put a good face on the 
matter. The crowd saw fun brewing, and " chaffed " the 
poor old gentleman rather sorely. He asserted that he 
had on his shelves all that the Government professors in 
Tokio hospitals prescribed, implying perhaps that my 
notions were a little antiquated. A pawky-looking old 
Christian servant of the silk grower finally silenced him, 
by saying dryly that he could not of course be expected 
to know about such remedies if he had never heard of them 
before, at which the crowd grinned, and the old doctor 
filled his pipe very quietly. 

I had been asked to address the Christians, and had 
begun to wonder when my chance to do so would come. 
I found that the old doctor was a difficulty. To hold such 
meetings might at that time have been thought illegal ; in- 
deed, Christianity itself is still formally under ban, although 



^4 Nine Yeaj's m Nipon. 

the highly civilised central Government is disposed 
formally to adopt liberal views. Beginning to suspect what 
the difficulty was, and perceiving that the doctor was a 
hard old nut to crack, and not very favourable to religion 
of any kind, I told the pastor that it would be better to 
invite unbelievers to hear what was to be said. We then 
moved into a large room, into which three others with 
sliding partitions opened. At one end a somewhat im- 
posing pulpit, composed of boxes covered with red cloth, 
had been erected. The large hall— for such it seemed— 
was dimly lit by candles placed on tall candlesticks, and 
I could see that the sick man had been able to '' take up 
his bed," which he had spread on the floor, and was look- 
ing up with earnest and wistful face. The audience was, 
to my surprise, very large. I conducted a simple service, 
such as we have in Scotland, and preached on the first 
commandment. No preacher ever had a more attentive 
and eager audience. I was glad to see, listening with 
sharp and critical attention, the old doctor and his son, 
the latter being a polite and pleasant youth, with long 
black locks falling like a thick veil over his bashful face, 
which he shook back with a jerk every now and again. 
After bringing the service to a close, I had a good deal of 
conversation with the people on the subject of the one true 
God, idolatry, etc., and was glad to see that they had an 
intelligent grasp of our teaching. No difficulties were 
urged, but suspense was alleged by them as the most be- 
coming attitude meanwhile. How thoroughly Eastern 
this is. One would enjoy hard fighting better. 

After sundry hints, I again got to the little room I was 
to occupy, a large part of the congregation accompanying 



A Constdtation in the Hills, 85 

me to light their tiny pipes at the charcoal brazier placed 
in the middle of the company, and continue the conversa- 
tion. I was really ready for a meal now, and had to 
share my slender store of cocoa with those who were 
curious to taste the foreign stuff. 

It was now late, or rather early, but no signs of my 
being able to retire to rest were apparent. After long 
forbearance, and one or two polite hints which were as 
politely and dexterously fended, I ventured on a highly 
original course not provided for in Japanese etiquette, 
and which I would modestly recommend to travellers in 
the Far East similarly placed. I stretched myself, and 
gave one most unmistakeable yawn, which a deaf man in 
the next house might easily have heard. A bomb-shell 
bursting in the apartment could not have more quickly 
dispelled its tenants. 

In a couple of minutes one of the domestics appeared 
with a pile of silk-covered cotton quilts for bedding, and 
in a few minutes more, in spite of the picturesque cirri 
and ciumili of coarse tobacco that floated over my quiet 
couch, I was sleeping the sleep of the just. 



S6 Nine Years in Nipon. 




CHAPTER VII. 
A Co7isiiltation in the Hills (Continued). 

A Charming Bedroom — Landscape Gardening in Miniature — Duck's Eggs 
and Duty — Some World-forgotten Ones — Doctors sometimes differ — A 
Hint for Pious Busy-bodies — Religious Radishes — Tincture of Snake — 
Rays of Buddha — Midnight in a Forest — "Resources of Civilization" 
— A Suspicious Case — Toddy versus Timidity — Loving the Darkness. 

Y bedroom opened on two sides into adjoining- 
and much larger apartments by partitions of 
open woodwork, like windows with panes of 
tissue paper instead of glass, a system which 
allows of a good deal of wholesome ventila- 
tion, especially in cold weather. One side of 
the room was plastered very smoothly and 
evenly with a warm iron grey cement, while trunks of young 
spruce firs, stripped of their bark and leaving a glossy 
clean surface like silk, did duty as posts. As such posts 
are always carefully selected with a view to ornament 
they gave the room an elegant air of primitive simplicity 
idealised, which I think is a chief and very subtle charm 
in a well planned Japanese house. The floors were of 
course covered with the usual thick, finely woven, and in 
this case, scrupulously clean straw mats bordered with 
coloured tape. My room opened into one .of those mar- 
vellous little courts of some three or four yards square, 
containing a most effective suggestion of the margin of 



A Consultation in the Hills. 8/ 

an impenetrable forest from which there projects into a 
pebbly lake teeming with gold fish, a most geologically- 
correct cape, down which rushes a foaming cascade, and 
on whose sunny banks bask some metallic blue-tailed 
lizards and a sluggish turtle. You might cross to the 
island of well-cropped turf and find there an ancient 
stone lantern, stained by the grandest of colourists — Time 
— with every richest hue of velvetty moss and slow craw- 
ling lichen. 

Afterthe clattering of sliding shutters had subsided, I had 
a hearty breakfast of duck's eggs — hard boiled — rice, biscuits, 
and the inevitable straw-coloured tea, and then passed on 
to the pitifully monotonous little group of blear-eyed, 
crippled, and occasionally leprous humanity that dogs the 
steps of a medical missionary. It is curious how hopeless 
sufferers are dragged, as if by some strange selective mag- 
net, from their retreats in dim sombre valleys, untrodden 
by the ordinary visitor, dark hovels and lonely garrets, all 
forgotten of the great busy world whom they can no 
longer serve. Here was the old doctor again, clean 
shaven and hair newly trimmed, grinning as sardonically 
as ever but vastly more polite in speech, looming in the 
background generally, perhaps alert enough as to what 
was doing, but in a most elaborately disengaged manner 
tapping with ever varying gesture on the edge of the 
brazier with that everlasting pipe of his. His distress was 
so apparent that I was compelled to comfort the good old 
man by drawing him out publicly — for by this time we 
were the centre of a considerable crowd — by finding what 
he did know, and we parted pleasantly, both of us with 
the happy feeling that we had taught as well as learned. 



88 Nine Years in Nipon. 

After visiting a few sick folk in the neighbourhood who 
were bedridden, accompanied by my former guide I 
started on my return journey through fields of mulberry, 
the people in the crowded court-yard ducking a wave of 
compliments like a patch of sedges under a strong gale. 
Then we got into our carriage and pair (of men) and 
were away through narrow pathways cut through golden 
sweetly scented acres of sesamum, past sloppy rice fields 
into the mud of which men and boys were treading cut 
grass and weeds for manure ; then rattling across rough 
wooden culverts, or splashing through gleaming pools 
which the rains had formed. 

Our way lay past an interesting cave naturally 
formed, I think, in a very hard rock which scratched 
glass, and not far from it we saw a famous temple, 
Me-no-ma Shoden. In the spacious grounds were 
numerous stalls adorned with toys, ornaments for rustic 
belles, and sweetmeats. The whole neighbourhood was 
gay with a festive display of flowers and paper lanterns. 
What struck me most was a very ample preaching 
hall, open at the sides and adorned — not with the 
commandments of Buddha or the precepts of Confucius, 
but with pictured advertisements of the trades to which the 
pious patrons were severally devoted. The idea seemed 
a singularly happy one, and I venture to offer the sugges- 
tion to some of those good people who give their energies 
to church bazaars. In Japan it is usual, by the way, 
to give credit for larger subscriptions than are 
actually received. At the gate there was a curious 
carved stone pillar, round which a horribly grinning elf 
was slyly peeping at the passing devotee — truly a clever 



A Consultation in the Hills. 89 

piece of rural work. The crest on all the temple adorn- 
ments was forked radishes rampant with limbs entwined. 
The temple, I was told, belonged to a corrupt Shinto 
cult, tainted with Buddhism. The posts were lacquered 
red like those of Buddhist temples, while within was dis- 
played the mirror, of which I have said something in 
another chapter. I have a manuscript copy of the engrav- 
in<.s in a famous old work, the Butsu-zo-dmi, which 
contains a Buddhist figure like the Hindu Ganesa, with 
an elephant's head. He holds in one hand a trident, and 
in the other a forked radish-like plant. 

As I struck off from the main road by a mountain path, 
a fine large snake of a species I had not previously cap- 
tured, became a victim, and I soon had it comfortably 
settled in a bottle of alcohol which I secured in an oil 
shop, under the somewhat veiled [oxm oi amkohoru, as the 
letter / is awanting in the copious alphabet of Japan. 
I was generally credited by an inquisitive public with the 
manufacture of medicine. 

At Kumagai we found the last coach to Tokio had left 

hours ago, and the hotel-keepers drew doleful pictures of 

the state of the road, which, truly enough, was at that time 

infested with gangs of murderous brigands. I could not 

afford to delay, and after lavish inducement had been 

offered, prevailed on two brawny coolies to contract to take 

me into the city by daybreak. After a hurried supper, I 

parted with my kind guide who, as I have said, was an old 

servant of the patient I had been asked to visit. It was 

clear to me that there was some concern for my safety, 

and that the two men who drew me were not without some 

apprehensions. However, I felt that I must go, and that 



90 Nine Years in Nipon. 

the risk might after all be very slight. By-and-by the 
shadows on the hills deepened — 

" The sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : 
At one stride comes the dark " — 

lowering summer thunder-clouds gather about the hills 
we had come from, and they throb with pale purple 
sheet lightning. The rayons du crepuscle, too, which some 
suppose to be due to a lofty stratum of suspended ice- 
particles, stretch their long bows of indigo, alternating 
with rose, across the zenith from west to east They are 
often in the east called the " rays of Buddha." 

We stopped for a long time at the entrance to a dreaded 
forest which stretched in one almost unbroken expanse to 
near the city. Close by the little tea-house where the 
men were refreshing themselves, was a wood-cutter's hut, 
from whose dimly-lighted room came a hard, soul-piercing 
cough, which sounded to a trained ear like a funeral knell. 
The crescent moon was bending down through a strip of 
lemon-coloured sky to the western horizon, when I again 
took my seat, the men warning me that now came the 
place of danger. As a mild precaution, having no armour, 
I buckled up a large, very knobby stone into my handker- 
chief, placed it " convanient," and began to admire the 
grand woodland scenery, dimly lit by stars and a setting 
moon. It was highly fascinating, and the sense of 
lurking danger kept me awake and served to give 
a certain piquancy, but it at last grew monotonous. 
By-and-by I glided quietly from the sombre forest with 
its impenetrable shadows, into a trim railway station, and 
was off at express speed through gas-lit villages merry 



A Consultation in the Hills. 91 

with the whirr of giant factories, across magnificentviaducts 
which spanned lordly rivers crowded with great vessels ; 
over points with many a bump and crash, and at last with 
a sudden bang — into a magnificent terminus, with palatial 
hotel and crowds of welcoming friends ? — no ; but after I 
had rubbed my eyes very well for a minute or so — off the 
main road altogether, and into the forest itself, the shafts 
of my vehicle on the ground, and my trusty varlets stand- 
ing a little apart from me, and indulging in vehement 
whispers. I clutched my formidable ballista, assumed a 
dramatic attitude, and prepared, in the solemnising lan- 
guage of public bodies, " to take such steps as the cir- 
cumstances might seem to call for." I at once saw that in 
the first place, at least, I had to deal with allies — not foes. 
They had quenched their paper lanterns, and besought 
me to remain silent, while they crouched with hands at 
ears listening intently. There was a faint sound from 
along the road, which soon resolved itself into a vehicle 
of some kind, drawn by two horses, galloping madly in 
our rear. I was still in great doubt as to what the whole 
thing meant, when the vehicle swept up, and the two men 
who were with me leaped into the road with a sudden shout. 
The driver pulled up in fear at first, friendly salutations 
ensued, and anon a sleepy man tumbled out. At this 
precise moment I candidly admit that I believed myself 
to have fallen into a fatal trap, stood with my back against 
a thick trunk, and took a much cooler last glance (as I 
really thought) at mother earth than I had supposed at 
all possible for anybody to do in the circumstances. In 
a moment I recognised in the drowsy man my recent 
guide, who lost no time in telling me that he could not 



92 Nme Years in Nipon. 

sleep after his usual " wee drap " of rice-whisky for think- 
ing of me lying murdsred in this wood, after I had been 
committed to his care. 

The faithful old fellow had got out of bed, communi- 
cated his superstitious dread, or rather toddy nightmare, 
to the townfolks, and had, at considerable expense to his 
wealthy master, engaged the vehicle which my coolies 
only recognised when close to us. That his dread was 
not quite imaginary I fully comprehended, when I read a 
few days afterwards in a native newspaper a vivid and 
trustworthy account of the stoppage of two coaches near 
that very spot, in daylight, by armed bands of robbers, 
who wounded the driver and guards and made the 
passengers stand and deliver. At the post-town close by, 
and at the same time, the banker and several well-to-do 
people had their throats cut by robbers. 

I rewarded my two men liberally, took my seat 
in the little car, and was soon jolting along 
merrily, to the accompaniment of some lively tales 
of murder and robbery by the old man, who waxed 
garrulous. I arrived in Tokio just before day- 
break. The streets were deserted, dark, and silent ; but 
here and there might be seen a broken-down old rascal, 
with a broken-down and very dirty jinrikisha, doing night 
work. I engaged one for my bag, and found that his 
story was a commoner one than many old residents may 
suppose. He had taken to drink, could no longer get 
respectable day-work, and so busied himself dragging 
slowly along, with legs trembling as much from disease as 
old age, red-faced old Japanese gentlemen who had been 
" dining out," or spending a day at the theatre, and on 



A Consultation in the Hills. 



93 



whom blind fortune had smiled a little more favourably 
than on himself So ended my consultation visit to Kiriu. 




^ISBE.J.S^~ 




94 Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Mitake San — TJie Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 

Bad Roads and Better Language — Spiders and Beetles — A Japanese Scare- 
crow — Night Storm in a Forest — A Dispirited Coolie — Sunday Quiet 
and Questioning — Buddhist Teaching and Modern Science — Passports 
and Preaching — A Picturesque School — Sick Cicadas — Art and Nature 
— Brambles and Barefeet. 

AFTER a hard day and night's work we got off one 
morning in the hot season long before daybreak with 
our pale sick-worn little ones. We were quickly hurried 
through dark miry streets, by mossy walled moats, and 
through weary long drawn suburban rows of wooden 
dwellings, the inhabitants of which were just stirring up 
into activity. Now and again our perspiring jinrikisha 
men would stop to have a thimble-like cup of pale tea, 
a tiny pipeful of tobacco, and a spasmodic colloquy, 
chiefly composed of very significant but to Western 
ears mild ejaculations about the quality of the roads 
which, according to the profession, must be under- 
going very steady deterioration. Poor fellows ! I 
wonder when some Japanese Thomas Chalmers will be 
able to solve the problems which they suggest to one. 
Soon the sun rose laughingly, and then hospital cares, and 
the raw, clammy mist seemed to vanish together. The 
children began to be amused with the flowery hedge rows, 
the patient oxen, and the noisy village festivals in which 
the Japanese are always commemorating, with gay Ian- 



The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 95 

terns and merry processions, some old dead emperor or 
the birth-day of his great grand uncle ! 

By-and-by we stopped to give our men a meal and 
rest Some kind farm people in the neighbourhood 
brought sweets and tempting fruits and vegetables, with 
now and then some gay flowers, and the children got out 
to wander amongst the luxuriant vegetation of the garden- 
like fields through which our road passed. It was won- 
derful to see how their eyes opened with a new delight 
when they discovered a great gaudy spider, which began 
clumsily to vibrate her curious zig-zag netted web to avert 
attention, or when they happened to uncover a bevy of 
copper-brown beetles cropping the tender vine leaves. At 
last with ruddier cheeks and brighter eyes than we had seen 
for a long time, they came running to announce an as- 
tounding discovery. It was a curiosity of the quaintest 
kind — a real Japanese scarecrow, which of all the — but I 
fear a description would hardly be suitable for these grave 
pages. 

We are soon off again with greater speed. One coolie 
has sold out his contract, and a new man joins our com- 
pany, with strange, guttural " slangy " Japanese which 
none of us can understand very well. After some hours 
we stopped for dinner at a pretty little wayside tea-house, 
with big, fat gold-fish and a grand Scotch " burn " foam- 
ing and tearing through mossy boulders. I distributed 
here a good number of books to the villagers who flocked 
to see us. Off again ! for miles along a very broad and 
leafy avenue, with a ditch running through its centre, on 
and on till we all began to nod, and awoke to find our- 
selves being heavily dragged at night through a dreary 



96 Nine Years in Nipon. 

wood, with rain pouring upon us in violent torrents, and 
even our poor coolies invisible in the gloom, save when a 
flash of lightning lit up the murky scene. Our men all 
began to be afraid, and it required all my available wits 
to keep them up, and to keep them together. Sometimes 
we had to stop and halloo for five or ten minutes on the 
others, as we could not find any definite path, and one 
of the coolies fairly broke down in spirits. He never 
entirely recovered his cheerful disposition, and I think 
had been overcome by superstitious dread chiefly. We 
had two hours of this work in the dark wet forest, but at 
last arrived at a cheery place of human voices and flitting 
shadows. 

There are worse places than a clean Japanese inn after 
such a dismal night, and we all fully appreciated its com- 
forts. We had intended to reach the hills that Saturday 
night, but I was not sorry to find so comfortable a 
Sabbath resting-place on the way. I arranged, with some 
caution on account of certain regulations, to have a meet- 
ing, and went out to see about me. Ome is a large and 
very pretty market town with an avenue of trees then in 
full bloom, gnarled pine and cherry, with some plum trees 
and crape myrtles, running up its main street. It lies at the 
base of the hills, which are grandly wooded just where 
the sparkling river which supplies Tokio with water breaks 
from its enclosing valleys and runs joyfully down to the 
plains. The town lies on one of the boulder-strewn ter- 
races left by the ancient river. There are no clear 
evidences of glaciation. It boasts of a fine temple to 
which you climb by a very lofty and dangerously steep 
flight of stairs. The people seemed to be better built and 



The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 97 




rather healthier than those of the plain around Tokio, and 
their oxen were notably large and sleek. 

We went to the temple, and there found a great many 
children playing about the shrines, with whom we con- 
versed, giving away numerous 
copies of a little illustrated life of 
Joseph, the only suitable work 
which had been published. Not 
far off I stumbled on a finely- 
carved piece of Sanscrit — which 
might probably be one of those 
mantras or charms which the de- 
graded Buddhism of the Far East 
is too prone to lean upon, but my 
slight knowledge of Sanscrit was of 
little avail in its interpretation. On 
coming down to the town again, a kind, hearty old 
woman, seeing that our little ones were thirsty, asked us 
into her clean little hut, and presented each of us very 
gracefully with a cup of deliciously cool spring water, 
such as the wealth of Tokio could not buy in that city. 
Gracious old heathen woman, may thy kind and gentle 
deed be remembered to thee on that Great Day ! 

In the evening I had prepared to address a good 
audience, and at the hour appointed came down to a 
large room of the tea-house opening into the street, which 
had been kindly offered to me. I was amused to witness 
the discomfiture of my old cook when we looked round on 
an array of empty mats, for I am sure he had puffed the 
proceedings very thoroughly and conscientiously. I tried 
to assure him that the audience would be all right, and 



From a Natizie Sketch. 



9^ Nine Years in Nipon. 

that we should have a full house. I got the children to 
the door and began to talk to them playfully in English. 
It was irresistible. Respectable people, with small bank 
accounts even, who were loungingabout as if waitingappoint. 
ments, of course quite unconscious of anyproposed meeting, 
would condescend to pause in passing and laugh for a 
little at the gibberish, so we bagged them all. We began 
with about thirty people, and before I had read a portion 
of Scripture the room was quite full. Some noisy young 
Japanese lads — from the city probably — began audibly to 
criticise in not very polite terms the doctrine of the cross ; 
but they were soon stabbed into silence by a polite but 
oblique thrust which the audience appreciated heartily, 
and some of them sneaked in to join us. By-and-by the 
head official, with a small party, peeped in as he was pas- 
sing, and stood patronisingly to look on from above the 
rest who were seated. Curiously enough I proceeded just 
then to speak of our holy religion requiring proper respect 
to be paid to those in authority, and was glad to see that 
he waited till the end. For fully two hours I had 
as closely attentive an audience as any one could wish 
for. 

I told the main facts of the life of Christ, just as we may 
suppose them to have occurred in the view of a heathen 
observer ; of how claims of divinity had roused the hatred 
of the Jews against Him, of His peculiar trial by mixed 
judicial forms acquitting Him of moral guilt, but condemn- 
ing Him for calling Himself God ; of His strange and 
terrible death, burial, and reported resurrection. I went 
on to examine the evidence of the latter, and told how the 
civilised races of the West had soon been compelled to 



1 he Sacred Moimt of the Three Peaks. 99 

accept it as a glorious fact, full of hope for all men. When 
I spoke of the resurrection, they did not laugh as others 
did of old, but a very fine-looking, pale old woman with 
silvery hair, sitting beside her fat, prosperous, jolly-faced 
husband, and drinking in all that was said with great 
eagerness — stopped me in the most courteous Japanese 
manner to say, that although I was a foreigner she had 
understood very well what I had been saying, but that she 
could not quite understand my meaning when I spoke of 
Jesus rising from the dead after having been laid in His 
grave ! 

I had all my books cleared off very quickly, and could 
have disposed of many more. Questions about them 
were freely asked. Long after I had retired for the night 
I could hear murmurs of conversation on the subject of 
the religion of Yasu, which was till recently a synonym 
for every kind of horrible sorcery. Before leaving I was 
asked to send some one to teach them more about our 
religion ; but when Mr. Miura, a very able native preacher, 
went out, he does not seem to have got very much 
encouragement in fact, and speedily returned. I did 
not quite agree with him as to this course, as no actual 
opposition had been offered, and such would now, I am 
happy to say, be illegal in Japan, where all peaceful 
religions are tolerated. It is right to add, that this place 
is in the diocese of a Buddhist bishop, who holds that the 
earth is flat, and who has been mobbed, it appears, in 
Yokohama by lads of modern tendencies for teaching 
such an absurd doctrine. In my first address and before 
knowing anything about this, I laid down very dogmatic- 
ally, contrary opinions, and appealed to scientific text- 



100 Nine Years in Nipon. 

books to support my statements, although I am not 
quiet clear yet as to the immediate connection of that 
subject with Christianity. However, I have faith in the 
truth of these things ultimately helping us, and the people 
are beginning to find that we are more accurate and 
trustworthy in ordinary matters than their own teachers 
are. 

It is as yet very difficult to organize regular evangelistic 
work in the interior, not on account of any bigoted 
intolerance of our teaching, but simply from the fact that 
passports are needed for foreigners, and the only objects 
which have been legitimised are " scientific research " and 
" health." I have never gone out except on bona fide 
errands of the one class or the other. I am sure, how- 
ever, that it was not the intention of the Japanese 
government to restrict us in propagating Christianity by 
this regulation, but simply to prevent large mercantile 
transactions being imposed on simple country folks outside 
of the treaty ports. There can therefore be nothing wrong 
or illegal, as some who are uninformed have supposed, in 
seizing passing opportunities to proclaim the gospel of 
Christ. The legality of this course is not now questioned by 
the authorities at all. I trust, however, that such a 
modification of the existing treaties may soon be made as 
shall perm^it, not only the unfettered use of our tongues in 
the interior, but the organization of regular tours for the 
purpose of pleading our cause. The Japanese government 
have shown a very excellent spirit, and are largely 
tolerant. It remains for our press and high of^cials on 
their part to show a somewhat more sympathetic and 
conciliatory disposition than has sometimes prevailed. 



TJie Sacred Moitnt of the Three Peaks. loi 

We left the pretty town of Ome early, and had a 
delightful journey past peach orchards and through 
the rising valleys till we came under the solemn shadow of 
those " great protuberances " which, in spite of Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, will always awe and cheer the heart of any 
genuine warm-blooded Scotchman. The river here was 
seen through tangled bamboo brake and fresh scented 
pines to run far below us, through great white plains of 
pebbles luminous in the sun. It was studded too with 
clumsily picturesque water-mills, built on huge boats which 
are strongly moored to the banks, but are ready to be let 
slip if need be, when the rain floods raise them. Numer- 
ous rafts of roughly cut wood are floated down from the 
mountain forests to the populous plain. The road, for a 
rural mountain road, is very good, and is built up with 
huge water-worn stones of great geological variety. At 
one place far from any large village, a very spacious 
school has been built in the new foreign style, but with 
Swiss-like and romantic modifications — ^just such a place 
as one's boyish memories must cling to with^love. I have 
visited several of those new schools which are spread all 
over the country, and have been quite pleased to witness 
the marked efficiency of some of them. What is needed 
more than anything now is fresh and good text-books 
suited to the changed times and new life of the country. 
The Japanese have adopted many translations of our own 
best text-books, but not a few of them are quite unnatural 
grafts upon Japanese civilization. Now as^^l^mission schools 
are being opened all over the country toj which we have 
access, something of this kind might very soon be 
attempted, with reasonable prospects of success. It may 



102 



Nine Years m Nipon. 



surprise and please many to hear that in Japan there is 
not only now an official Sabbath-day of rest, which is 
spreading its influence wider and wider, but that the 
government text-books also are often theistic, and might 
even on account of an obscurity in the language be thought 
monotheistic. Some may think that this is rather, however, 
an example of the shallow eclecticism that has so largely 
characterized the recent progress of Japan. But neither 
theism nor monotheism are quite fresh and foreign to the 
Far East. 

My wife and 
the children 
were packed 
tightly into /^«^<?^ 
— the old sedan 
chairs of Japan 
— which are still 
found useful in 
moun t ainou s 
districts, where 
wheeled vehicles 




From a Native Sketch. 



cannot go. 

As we toiled up the shaded paths which lead to the quiet 
little hamlet and temple which crown the misty summit, 
we were constantly cheered by the tinkle of many a cool 
and pellucid rill, the sound of the wood-cutter's axe, or 
the shrill but not unpleasing note of the cicada, which 
may be heard at an almost incredible distance. Once or 
twice while listening to its metallic skirl^ which, like the 
sweet old bagpipes, derives some enchantment from dis- 
tance, the painted singer suddenly ceased its song and 



The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 103 

fell dead at our feet Though its three central eyes still 
gleamed with their own ruby-like lustre, and its outward 
form and colour were quite fair to see, within it was a 
mere mass of dust and rottenness, for a deadly fungus had 
rapidly consumed all its vital organisation, leaving a 
sweet voice and nothing more. Many insects die in this 
way, and it has been proposed to cultivate and sow the 
special parasitic germs which are hostile to any given 
species, where they can be readily infected. So the 
much-abused germs of disease may yet come to render 
friendly services to man. 

There is a great variety of timber in the mountains of 
this range, and the forestry department is becoming alive, 
not a day too soon, to the economical wants of modern 
Japan in this respect. Very neat books are published by 
the Educational Department, which contain thin sections 
of all the woods which are grown. Deforestation had 
been going on very rapidly in the " good old " feudal 
times, but when the cry of alarm was raised, efficient 
measures were taken to remedy the evil in the future. 
Many are the advantages which the country seems to be 
about to reap from its intercourse with the scientific 
activity of the West, and benevolent forethought for 
posterity is certainly not the leact of the virtues which are 
being derived from contact with our Christian civilisation. 
They have planted many new trees here, such as the 
Eucalyptus, or Australian blue gum tree, of whose uni- 
versal virtues rather wildly exaggerated notions seem to 
prevail here as in Europe. 

When we got up into the rarer atmosphere we found it 
delightfully cool, and the forest paths were gloomy with 



104 Nine Years in Nipon. 

an almost raw mist, which seemed at once to brace up 
one for almost any undertaking. Buckle is partly right, 
although he was late in the .field. This influence of the 
mountain air was disappointingly transient however, and 
I think we were still under a great malarious fog-blanket 
which spreads over this part of Japan and of which I 
could sometimes define the outline very well. Other 
ranges are more free from it, and I find many medical 
facts to support this observation. 

We visited the temple more than once, and, along with 
a missionary brother of another denomination, had some 
interesting talks with the old rector. He showed me a 
fine old native work on archaeology, consisting of about a 
hundred thin volumes magnificently illustrated. I was 
fortunate in picking up a complete copy a few years after- 
wards in a back lane in Tokio, and found the figures 
relating to Buddhism very valuable. The priests all 
seem to foresee the decay of Buddhism in Japan ; and 
some of them also see pretty clearly that even now the 
battle amongst educated Japanese is between scientific 
agnosticism and Christianity. The Roman and Greek 
systems have been very well considered by the 
Japanese, and will always have " converts " so long as 
their funds hold out. The " Greeks " use our books 
largely, and the Bible is read by them. I trust that many 
of them have got the essence of the faith in them. 

One misty day we went to visit a very wild and im- 
pressive glen, through whose mossy boulders a foaming 
stream tears with thunderous uproar, forming some 
small but very romantic cataracts. In the midst 
of the glen there rise up from the thick foliage 



The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 105 

two rocky and precipitous peaks, bare of soil, but 
mossy and lichen-stained with many a rich hue. In a 
cleft on each peak a very skilfully wrought elf in fine 
bronze, has been erected. The two figures, which are 
nearly life-size, are different conceptions. Anything 
more \Y€vc6\y gruesome and unhuman I have never seen, 
even in childhood's dreams. They are really high works 
of art, and characteristically Japanese. Those who 
placed them there must have had a keen sense of their 
harmony with the wild scene which surrounds them. 

I had other plans to carry out ; but before an3^thing 
could be done, and while sitting at a lamp one midnight 
catching moths which were numerous and very beautiful, 
a Government messenger appeared with a telegram from 
Tokio, requiring my immediate presence there. After a 
short nap, I left my sick children, and at daybreak started 
with my friend, to whom I have alluded, taking unfortun- 
ately a short cut down the mountain. Of course we lost 
our way, and just after the sun had fairly warmed to his 
work, we had to climb again the long and exposed 
spur we had come down. I lay down at last faint, 
sick, and thirsty, and was glad to lick any drops 
of dew which remained on the leaves. My friend 
had to return after we got into the track. Soon 
my shoes, cut up by the sharp stones, fairly gave 
out, and I threw them away. The flinty bed of a dry 
stream, which served for a road, kept me in'active employ- 
ment for more than half-an-hour, and then, when I thought 
my troubles were at an end, an interminable brambly 
footpath spread its charming vista before me. With torn 
and dirty clothes, shoeless, lame, and with bleeding feet^ 



io6 Nine Years in Nipon. 

I got to my halting place just in time to carry out my 
plan. My appearance was not calculated to promote 
respect, and I got an exceedingly rude reception and wel- 
come refreshment at a little dirty tea-house in an out-of- 
the-way village at the foot of the mountains. A benevo- 
lent jinrikisha-man was induced to take me on a bit for 
double the usual fare, and I got a pair of Japanese socks 
and sandals, but found that I had been mischievously 
supplied with women's. However, they were very clean 
and comfortable, although they did receive more notice 
from travellers than was pleasant. 

I got two fresh men, and dashed at a rapid rate over 
hill and dale, through brake and stream, till at last the 
large and picturesque town of Hachoji, with its clear cool 
river, and its great sacred cars, now bright with paint and 
varnish, began to draw near. There, after a hearty meal 
with chop sticks, sitting cross-legged on the mats, I caught 
an antiquarian oddity of a 'bus, which held together toler- 
ably well till we got to Tokio, which w^as, as usual, red 
with the glare of a great conflagration. 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 



107 



CHAPTER IX. 

Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 

A Village Festival — Butterflies and Cicadas — A Noisy Inn — River Scene — 
Silk — Dining on Hot Water — Mimicry in Spiders — A Mountain Pass — 
Tea and Tattle — A Tragic Pool — Dissolving Views — Spindle Whorl — 
An Exciting and Ludicrous Scene — Limbs of the Law— Curious 
Bridge — Pious Parishioners and a Prudent Rector. 




NE who wishes to admire a great 
mountain must remain below. The 
very worst possible use you can put it 
to is to climb it. I have never climbed 
Fuji, and don't mean ever to do so. I 
believe what people say as to its 
height to be pretty nearly correct, 
and can quite understand that it must 
be intolerably cold up there, and that the fleas in the 
rest-houses, on the way up, are found unusually stimulat- 
ing ; but I don't know that the simple repetition of other 
people's monotonous experiences in this way would add 
much to my own knowledge or enjoyment. Besides, if it 
must be said, I am getting middle-aged and somewhat 
short of breath, and to go up Fuji on a man's back, as a 
friend once gravely proposed to me, would be simple 
profanity. 

I left Tokio one afternoon late in July, under a dull 
sky, in a jinrikisha, with tandem ; was spun rapidly 
across the lotus-covered moats, past the ruined castle of 



io8 Nine Years in Nipon. 

the Shogun now mantled with ivy and bowered in sweet- 
scented honey-suckle, through a lordly avenue of hoary 
pines, past the trim barracks of the Life Guards and the 
red brick walls of the English Legation — away out through 
the wooded plains after the setting sun. As we reached 
the outskirts of the city, a village festival was going on ; 
white-robed Shinto priests in a wooden cage were per- 
forming some rites ; prettily-dressed girls, be-flowered 
and be-powdered, their lips reddened with carmine and 
their faces whitened, were ringing the prayer-bell, while 
there was a prolific display oigohei or white paper symbols, 
and piles of unleavened show-bread. A crowd of wor- 
shippers was busily engaged in making huge pasteboard 
standards for the impending procession. There are al- 
ways in the suburbs great trains of bullock-carts, pack- 
horses, and slow-thinking bumpkins in charge of them. 
I was greatly struck with the lush verdure of the country, 
which is a great plain of lava-sand and loamy alluvium, 
with which worms have had something to do ; but sub- 
aerial deposit of dust has evidently here, as elsewhere, 
played some part in the original formation of soil. The 
hedge-rows — not at all like ours — abounded in tiger- 
lilies and a tall, white-flowered plant, something like honey- 
suckle, which emits a yellow juice. 

A great many green or golden-red dragon-flies, and 
most magnificent butterflies, were fluttering about in 
shady lanes, — large " swallow-tails," black or spotted with 
sapphire tints, and a smaller jet-black butterfly, which ap- 
peared in the evening ; others bore a close resemblance 
to dead leaves, and the more closely they were examined, 
the greater seemed to be the likeness. When they 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 109 

alighted amongst old wood chips or decayed leaves, they 
kept jerking themselves about with their wings elevated. 
I saw also what seemed to be humming-bird hawk-moths 
fluttering in and out of large leafy trees. As there are no 
humming-birds in Japan, we must either believe that the 
humming-bird once mimicked such moths — and I have often 
seen them in other parts of Japan — or suppose, with the 
great naturalist, Mr. Bates, that similarity of habits has 
determined similarity of structure. 

The houses on the wayside are all thatched with great 
skill and neatness, and wild-flowers often adorn them. As 
evening closed in, great log fires blazing up for the prepara- 
tion of the evening meal on glazed black stove-like erec- 
tions not often seen in Tokio, cast a ruddy glow on the 
smoky interiors and roused inspiring memories of happy 
winter evenings in the old country. Those fire-places, 
which were new to me, resembled in appearance those 
used by Russian peasants, and were made of clay, black- 
ened and glazed like an American stove. The country 
through which we were passing was thickly wooded, and 
care seemed to have been taken to prevent deforestation. 
Some of the trees were apparently about two centuries 
old, and were immensely tall. The tree grass-hoppers 
and the cicadas made the woods resound with their stri- 
dent notes as with the roar of a cataract The cicada 
beats a pair of drums situated under its belly. The tree 
grass-hopper plays a kind of fiddle by means of the ser- 
rated margin of its wing sheath and the roughened edge 
of its thigh, and plays indeed often with such sweetness 
of tone that the Japanese imprison them in tiny cages, 
and feed them as we do canaries. Sometimes, however, 



no Nine Years in Nipon. 

the screech of those musical tree insects is almost like 
that of a locomotive whistle competition, and becomes 
quite painful to listen to. 

There are in Japan a few grand main roads or imperial 
highways along which almost all that is important in his- 
tory seems to have clustered, and they have been deter- 
mined in early times by physiographical conditions. 
That on which we are now travelling is called the Kofu- 
kaido, from Kofu, an important silk and grape growing 
town to which it . tends. Wood, at all events, is plentiful 
on the way, and we met many an old man tottering along 
under his load of lichened faggots. 

At last the landscape grew grey and then dark, and we 
began wearily to ask the distance from the first stage. It 
seemed a long time before the welcome cheery gleam of a 
lantern-lit town began to show itself through the masses 
of cypress and bamboo. It was Fuchiu where we were to 
pass the night, and a gay and festive scene was that on 
which we entered. The hotels were quite crowded with 
strangers, but we got accommodation at last. For supper 
we had ai fish and yams, tea, and that never-to-be-forgot- 
ten semi-putrid " bean " sauce concerning which there are 
dark rumours that the makers of certain well-advertised 
English sauces import large quantities from China and 
Japan. I got under an immense green mosquito net 
with my paper lantern, as the insects were troublesome, 
and began to make the foregoing notes. A fine gold and 
green buprestis got in and fluttered about the lamp, while 
I prepared to compose myself for reading a chapter or 
two of Bates on the Amazon. The coolies, like pigmies 
refreshed after supper and a hot bath, came in ducking 



Pilgrimage to Fuji tJie Peerless. 1 1 1 

most vigorously and beseeching me in the most winsome 
tones to give them a small advance towards my contract, 
as there was extraordinary and irresistible jollification 
going on in the hotel. Certainly the halls were filled all 
night with the sound of revelry, the smell of sake (rice- 
beer), and the fumes of coarse tobacco. Sleep was 
impossible, and I found myself to have been the victim of 
a horrid nightmare, in which the Amazon swallowed up 
the Tamagawa and Pera merged into the purlieus of 
Yokohama, — but whether I had been dreaming that I 
was Mr. Bates, or Mr. Bates that he had been me, I could 
not for the poor life of me tell. At length the impatient 
cock duly crowed in that pert and mathematically 
proper style peculiar to such an unimaginative bird, and 
the shrill scream of sliding shutters soon drowned its im- 
pertinent and fussy voice. The swallows, who had their 
nests under the eaves, were twittering in and out of the 
house, seeming to be specially fond of the telegraph wires 
and hardly ever alighting anywhere else. The usual 
washing appliances in a Japanese hotel are a piece of fos- 
silised soap, a blue cotton and malodorous coarse minia- 
ture table-napkin for a towel, and a wooden comb like a 
garden rake, common to all comers, as in the trite story 
told of the American passenger and the " ship's tooth 
brush." A small saucer full of dirty salt completes the 
set, as no Japanese is supposed ever to desire to look at 
himself in a mirror. The ladies of course have polished 
metallic ones, and like those of ancient Egypt, alas ! see 
only therein faces of brass ! Well, I am afraid my lack of 
sleep had spoiled my temper a bit. 

After rice and cocoa (I shall not be tempted here 



112 Nine Years in Nipon. 

to advertise the maker) we left about six o'clock, the 
day promising to be a hot one. The country a little 
beyond this opens up pleasingly, and our way now 
lay through fields of buckwheat, groves of persimmon 
trees now in fruit, and yams with great handsome 
leaves like lilies of the Nile. We had a glimpse of the 
river Tama-gawa, running between its reedy and gravelled 
banks, and which for the time had shrunk to small dimen- 
sions. Under the overhanging roots of an old tree on the 
edge of the bank I got hold of a magnificent large fungus, 
which I brought home with me. While crossing the ferry 
we found the water to be delightfully cool and clear. It 
supplies the city of Tokio through wooden mains twenty- 
seven miles long. Looking up the stream steep wooded 
banks appeared which had in some parts suffered from 
landslips, and the raw wounds showed through their bosky 
sides in whitish strata, looking in the distance like pipe clay. 
The banks were level atop on both sides at a similar 
height, showing the old alluvial plateau of the river's bed. 
In the far distance bluish toned mountains sweetly closed 
in the scene from the north. 

The land was now one great garden of mulberry 
plants, the dark green leaves of which form the food 
of the silk worm. On the highest of the old river 
terraces is an old temple built on a platform of large 
stones, and surrounded by a grove of trees some of 
which seemed to be nearly two centuries old. Passing by 
some reedy marshes teeming with interesting microscopic 
life as I afterwards found, we rattled into the busy little 
town of Hachoji, which has a population of about 8000. 
Along the centre of a long sloping street stood rows o^ 



Pilgri7nage to Fuji the Peerless. 1 1 3 

patient pack-horses, with trappings of burnished brass and 
long flapping fringes of red and brown leather paper to 
keep off the flies. They were as usual shod with straw 
slippers, and had each an extra couple of pairs slung to 
its harness. Through the middle of the street a stream 
of clear sparkling water rushes with pleasing gurgle, 
filling the frequent wells and turning little toy water 
wheels which children were watching with interest. Silk 
is the dominating idea of society in Hachoji. The coun- 
try is green with mulberry for the silk worms ; the shops 
are filled with baskets and other apparatus required in the 
rearing of the worms or winding of the cocoons, and every 
one seems to be engaged in some part of the various pro- 
cesses of silk manufacture. And yet one is not prepared 
to hear that Japan after all produces a very small propor- 
tion of the silk consumed in the world. More energy, 
more science, more economy, and better means of trans- 
port are all needed. 

Before entering the pass there is a small village — 
Kawara-no-hiku, where were some very fine cocoons and 
some beautiful floss silk. The roadside was adorned with 
many tall, straight and slim orange lilies growing wild. 
I examined them carefully but could not in this species de- 
tect any trace of those curious contrivances for insect ferti- 
lization of which so much is now written. At the bottom 
of each calyx lay a considerable quantity of clear fluid. 
They were quite smooth inside. Many of them were also 
growing on the grass ridge of the thatched cottages, where 
they produced a very striking and original effect. Large 
humming-bird hawk-moths were fluttering in and out of 
tall tree tops like birds, and I saw some lively specimens 



114 Nine YccTrs in Xij^oii. 

of cicindcla or tiger beetles about the mulberry bushes as 
we brushed past them. When we stopped to rest an old 
woman in a dirty little tea-house offered to prepare me 
some refreshment. I shall not readih* forget her astonish- 
ment when I told her to prepare a simple dinner of clean 
hot water for me. She had never seen chocolate before, 
and ventured timidl}' to taste the " foreign cla}- " — and it 
seemed to please her ver\' much. 

I got a fine nest of a Polisies hanging under the eaves 
— rather a queer situation for a wasp's nest, was it not ? 
While I was sitting at m}^ simple repast, a splendid* 
butterfly, having pale, dingy green swallow-tail wings, 
with dark spots of great size, was fluttering constantly 
about a piece of dung on the road opposite the tea-house. 

Common plantago was growing in great profusion. 
Here and there the steep hillsides have been terraced with 
the aid of boulders to j'ield rice, buckwheat, yams, etc., 
but the mulberry plant prevails over all this district of 
Japan. Our way now la}- up the toilsome Kobotoke pass. 
The road is singularly beautiful as it winds up through 
shady rocks and across boulder-strewn mountain torrents, 
whose cool white foam made one, panting under a hot sun, 
distractingly thirsty. The heat was really intense, and 
here jinrikiskas were of no avail. When resting from 
time to time on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree I saw 
many curious spiders, and captured a few interesting 
specimens which illustrated the principle of protective — 
or in this case rather destructive — mimicry in zoology. 
Those spiders bear a strong resemblance both in colour 
and form to fresh, unexpanded leaf-buds, and the sly 
wretch places himself just where a similar bud usually 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. "5 

occurs Others I found which closely resembled grass 
seeds, or withered spikes of larch. Those latter are very 
expert in hiding themselves, and cling closely to the side 
of the twig on which they hunt, generally changmg their 
position quickly if you watch them so as to have the stem 
between themselves and you. 

After some hours' hard climbing by zig-zag paths 
I arrived at a delightfully situated tea-house on the 
mountain's brow. It was propped up partly by a 
huge tree, and hung from the edge of a rock on a 
Platform of half-rotten pines over a great abyss. U- 
grims with their tinkling bells, pedlars and farmers 
were constantly arriving and departing, after having 
bought about a half-penny worth of tea, A refreshing 
breeze played over my heated forehead, and but or the 
day's rapid advance I could have remained much longer. 
The <.arrulous old landlady, who had something to say to 
everybody in a hearty piping voice, told me they never 
had any earthquakes there. Now this appeared to me a 
little striking, as one very notable earthquake apparently 
traversed the lofty range which this pass crosses, and was 
distinctly observed at Kofu, many miles beyond, as well 
as at Tokio, Yokohama, and other places on the other 
side The rocks in the vicinity are very interesting, and 
some good sections are visible. In Japan seismology has 
been prosecuted by native scholars as well as by foreign 
professors, with much originality and enthusiasm, and it 
is to be hoped that clearer ideas will soon emerge. 

On the way down we met further trains of pilgrims 
panting up the pass. I overheard two very amusing old 
fellowsdiscussing in pathetic and most philosophic style the 



1 1 6 Nine Years in Nipon. 

peculiar effect of gravity in making an uphill road so 
painfully exhausting to human beings. It was clear that, 
had the universe been left to them to amend this grave 
error in its constitution would soon have been put right. 

A series of short climbs, alternating with rapid and 
rocky descents, in one of which I sprained my foot 
severely, soon brought us to the river Baniu, which is 
navigable up to this point for small sailing boats. As my 
foot was beginning to get red and swollen, I sat down and 
laved it in the cold clear water for a long time. The 
scenery was very pleasing, and almost Swiss-like, an im- 
pression which was greatly aided by the white semi-Italian 
tower of a modern court-house rising above the shingled 
roofs of a village on the mountain's side. 

There was a pretty little fountain playing in the court of a 
tea-house where we stopped. It was supplied from a spring 
by bamboos, the thin partitions at the nodes of which are 
driven out by a long iron rod. Bamboo is often very use- 
ful in this way, but unfortunately it requires too frequent 
renewal. They told me, in answer to inquiries, that earth- 
quakes were felt occasionally there, but they were usually 
very slight. There are some very remarkable river- 
terraces of natural formation at Futase-goye. After cross- 
ing the river here, our path lay along a broad plain of 
glaring water-worn pebbles, which tried my still tender 
foot very greatly. Again we had to climb in order to re- 
gain the plateau of the old terrace on the opposite bank. 
There were sections of great cliffs exposed which were 
built up of loosely stratified water-worn stones of variable 
size, and which had been deposited when the climatal 
conditions of Japan were probably very different from 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. wj 

those that now prevail. In some parts the way was 
rather dangerous, and as night began to draw on, we passed 
a dreadful pool on a little lonely moor, surrounded by 
tragic red shafted pines. Soon the moon rose, solemn 
and clear, and, all alone, I trudged on amidst awful still- 
ness. 

The valleys were filled most of the time with soft fleecy 
clouds. Sometimes, ere it got dark, the great green plain 
of Yedo, with its meandering rivers and tangled maze of 
dusty gray roads hanging almost perpendicularly from the 
sky like a vast panoramic map, would break forth quietly 
for a little, soon to fade dreamily away again like a dis- 
solving view on a white curtain of mist. The whole 
scene was to me like a dream. I spent a very happy, 
peaceful Sunday in the midst of those calm, quiet hills 
near Yose, with a most home-like Japanese family, the 
members of which did everything they could to make me 
comfortable in mind and body. 

On the morning of the following day my host was 
sweeping the floor, and happening to require something, 
I spoke to him en deshabille. He answered me in humble 
language like a domestic. By-and-by, robed with dig- 
nity as master of the house, he came in to give me my 
morning salute, as if he had never seen me before. This 
seems a strange kind of hypocrisy, and yet one feels it to 
be essentially good-breeding on the whole. The morning 
air was delightfully clear and invigorating, and I started 
early, passing down hill through a very fine valley. At 
one quaint little hamlet I got a glimpse of primitive life 
which gladdened me very much. Some women and girls 
were busy spinning lengths of yarn by means of old- 



1 1 8 Nine Yeai's in Nipon. 

fashioned spindle-whorls. I have never seen stone ones- 
used anywhere, however, in Japan. That which was 
being used was a vertical pin of iron with a horizontal 
whorl of heavy wood. It was sent spinning round 
rapidly, the yarn being fastened to it and so receiving the 
proper twist. The lines were supported as in our rope- 
spinning yards, and several lines of thread were being 
twisted at the same time, each, of course, having its own 
spindle attached. The same instrument was used in 
Tokio by a previous generation. As we continued to 
descend various kinds of rock appeared in succession — 
some of them recent, and of volcanic origin. Springs 
were very frequent too, and the water was pleasant and 
cool — a real treat to any one coming from Tokio, where 
the water supply, though originally almost perfect, is con- 
taminated to an alarming extent by sewage and other im- 
purities. The roofs of the houses were mostly covered 
with shingles held in their places as in most mountain- 
ous countries against high winds by boulders placed atop. 
Rich balsams were growing in the stone walls from 
crevices ; the gardens were very trim, the roads wonder- 
fully well kept, and everything when I passed seemed as 
neat and clean as if the Mikado himself had been ex- 
pected to make an imperial progress in a day or so. I 
had got two coolies to carry me along, but they had been 
drinking ^heavily, and when we came to a sloping and 
sinuous road, which let you look sheer down over the jin- 
rikisha into a leafy segment of infinite space, they nudged 
each other, and commenced a series of very amiusing 
attempts, regardless of my helpless efforts to get out and 
stop them, to run [me along with one wheel just on the 



Pilgrimage to Fitgi the Peerless. 119 

verge of the abyss. I have never used my fists to a Japa- 
nese in any circumstances whatever, but on this occasion 
as I was really in danger, I at last stood up waving a 
corpulent umbrella over their wine-flushed pates like an 
excited American stump orator, and "felt like" applying it 
pretty vigorously. As a matter of course we suddenly 
came in sight of a little police station, with its inevitable 
pair of goggle-eyed preservers of the peace, who rushed 
out with severe inquiry and menace on their stern visages 
— but the cause of my offence was too obvious to be mis- 
taken, and my impetuous steeds were reproved with great 
severity. 

This place was Koma-hashi, on the river Katsura, 
which dashes in white foam over great boulders, hollowing 
out a gulley through hard stratified rock. You cross by 
a high bridge into a busy market town. This bridge is 
called Saru-hashi or the monkey's bridge, and is built on 
something like the modern cantilever principle. Messrs. 
Satow and Hawes thus describe it : — " It rests on the ends 
of a series of horizontal beams planted deep in the soil 
which covers the rock, laid in tiers, each tier projecting 
beyond and above the other, with cross beams laid in be- 
tween, and a little roof over the extremities to protect 
them from the effects of the weather." 

A little further on and to the right there was a massive 
dark basalt-like mass of rock, seemingly bare of trees, save 
two great pines near the flat summit, which only served 
to emphasize the general barrenness. Another prominent 
rocky spur rose up behind. We passed several water- 
falls and tributary brooks turning sluggish water-mills on 
their way, and then came to a halt for the day at Odzuki. 



120 Nine Years in Nipon. 

There is no good tea-house or hotel at this little village, 
but by aid of a friendly letter I found a quiet tidy little 
room, and soon scraped acquaintance with the neighbours, 
who seemed glad to have a chat with a foreigner. It was 
surprising to find how well they could understand an 
English large scale map of Japan (Brunton's) which I had 
opened out on the floor. The villagers in an English 
county town would by no means have been so well able to 
point out rivers and bays in Wales or Scotland on an 
English map. I am disposed to think that the system of 
military service and of religious pilgrimages have done very 
much not only to spread local geographical knowledge in 
Japan, but also to maintain comparative uniformity in the 

language. 

By-and-by my religious function became known, and 
some amusement was caused when it leaked out that the 
Kan-nushi of the adjoining parish, who had been conse- 
crating a new bridge, was to lodge there that night. I 
expressed great joy in the anticipation of a little friendly 
conversation before the company on the subject of the 
merits of our respective religions ; namely, Shinto, or the 
Way of the Spirits, and Christianity. The proposal was 
very heartily received by the pious parishioners who had 
assembled to do him honour ; but after many whispered 
communications it was made clear amidst much hearty 
lauo-hter, that the worthy rector had found his duties call 
him to a hamlet a little further on. This gave me a quiet 
opportunity of laying down the truth in a non-controver- 
sial form. Some levy was made on my very small, and 
on this occasion, merely personal supply of drugs, and I 
disposed of my remaining stock of books. 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 121 



CHAPTER X. 

Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 

Pretty Tree Frogs — Ancient Trees — Buddha-faced woman — Peep into a 
Village School— ^e Fish— Sweet Scenery—Awe inspiring Walk— Lava 
" Froth" and its Use — Mild Martyrdom— A Heavenly Vision— Moun- 
tain Lake— Volcanic Prairie Flowers — An Esthetic jinrikisha Man — 
A Statuesque Stoat— Novel Tail-piece— Patriotic Bias— Fans versus 
Flies. 

THERE was no post office in the town, and as writ- 
ing a letter would have been useless I took a stroll 
to the river to look at the new bridge which was being 
built. There were some dark purple velvety-winged 
dragon-flies hovering over the river and alighting on the 
smooth boulders. In a garden I saw a fine shapely 
column of basalt, hollowed out as a water-basin on the 
top, which confirmed a report I had heard of a beautiful 
formation of that kind further down the river, but which 
I could not reach. An old lady with an immense crowd 
of children about her was spinning, and looking now and 
again with calm interest at the " hairy foreigner." 

There are many venerable trees in this neighbourhood, 
and I saw one stump which showed more than two hun- 
dred rings. I am aware that now-a-days it is not sup- 
posed that a single ring invariably stands for a year ; but 
I think that those trees were about two centuries old at 
least. 

In the evening I walked along to the temple. The 

H 



122 Nine Years in Nipon. 

moist rice-fields were swarming with beautiful little bright 
green gilded tree frogs — at least the tips of their toes 
were expanded into small cup-like discs exactly like 
those of tree frogs, of which there are many in Japan. 
The little animals were exceeding lovely in colour, form, 
and even in expression. 

A curious ' water-worn stone is placed conspicuously 
by the wayside, its hollowed out cavity containing water. 
Close by is a wide court-yard containing a tree of great 
diameter, and what appeared to be an old temple. I saw 
no one there, but when I began to measure the girth of 
the trunk I became conscious of the wondering gaze of a 
kindly calm-looking matron, with the very expression 
Japanese artists so often give to their Buddhas, but which 
I had never seen in real life before. She was looking 
down on me from an adjoining two storey building of 
some dignity, from which the drowsy hum of many boy- 
ish voices rose. As I felt myself to be somewhat of a 
trespasser I explained that I had been attracted by this 
wonderful old tree, on which she asked me with great 
genuineness of manner to rest for a little, when her hus- 
band the schoolmaster would be glad to give me any in- 
formation about the district I might desire. The good 
dominie soon joined us, some very intelligent lads, who 
had been busy at vulgar fractions as I could overhear, 
chiming into the conversation with much pleasant hum- 
our, good sense and useful information. There was soon 
put before us all the usual pale strong tea in tiny cups, 
without sugar or cream, and little tablets of peppermint 
sugar — a favourite sweetmeat. After this the children, 
who were mostly from about seven to ten years of age. 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 



12 



were put through their exercises in reading and arithmetic 
very creditably. Indeed many of 'our own school inspec- 
tors would really have been able to appreciate their work, 
even in an unintelligible language. None of them knew 
a word of English, but it was clear that they were being 
taught efficiently to garner some of the best results of 
modern cosmopolitan civilization. They used the Arabic 
numerals as being more convenient, and had good maps 
and diagrams on the walls. The teacher himself was a new 
arrival, and had been educated in Tokio. He and his 
wife felt lonely in such a dreamy rustic neighbourhood, 
and he was longing for a sphere with greater stir and 

bustle. In a little the good 
lady hurried in with some 
fresh country eggs — a treat to 
any one who is accustomed 
to the fishy flavour of those 
produced on the seaboard. 
The fowls were of unusual size 
and vigour. 

The teacher had arranged 
a little excursion for next 
morning, so I was up at cock- 
crow, and found him along 
with a troupe of bright-faced 
merry big boys waiting for me 
when I arrived at the school- 
room. His kind spouse 
pressed some very eatable 
little dumplings on me, which 
were of good service before I 




TVMi-uilUk|fj^^,,, 



Aupler. 



124 Nine Years in Nipon. 

had gone far. We crossed the rushing Katsura, here 
famous for its fine ai which are caught with Hve bait, con- 
sisting often, as the teacher told me, of the young of the 
same species, usage quite as bad as seething a kid in its 
mother's milk, and certainly not what one would expect 
in a Buddhist country. But modern Buddhism does not 
strictly forbid either fish or wine, though you may see on 
any temple court-yard notices forbidding the carriage of 
those popular commodities through the sacred precincts. 
Evil-minded people whisper that they may be taken into 
the enclosure, however, without any serious penalty being 
incurred. The ai is a large fish when full grown, and re- 
sembles salmon a little. The object of our little expedi- 
tion was to visit a great dark basaltic rock resembling that 
on which Edinburgh Castle is so grandly perched. Its 
steep sides are thickly wooded, and we found it hard and 
hot work to reach the ruins of the old castle of Sir 
Oyamada Bichiu, belonging I think to the latter part of the 
sixteenth century. The boys leaped along the peaks of 
basalt like goats, now yelling with delight when they un- 
earthed an unfortunate snake, or with a somewhat different 
emotion when they trod on a prickly shrub. The stones 
were very slippery, fallen trees presented good opportuni- 
ties for gymnastics, and every spot was covered by long 
rank grass which cut your hands like a badly set razor. At 
one secluded spot there was an old forgotten looking tem- 
ple, the images in which were of a rather primitive type, 
found in only a few parts of Japan. 

On our way down we called on a wealthy silk farmer, 
whose mulberry groves flanked the mountain. He gave 
us a most kindly and hospitable reception to his large 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 125 

and orderly establishment, and showed us his collection 
of Japanese drawings and pottery. After my back had 
been suppled with profound salutations to each member 
of a large family, tea and a delicious kind of Turkish de- 
light made in the district were laid before us, and we sat 
on the clean straw mats discussing the latest news from 
Tokio and the new doctrine of Yasii^ till it was time to 
return. On hearing I was a surgeon it was felt at once 
that the " gods were gracious," as the good lady of the 
house was suffering severely from an eye affection, for 
which I was able to leave some useful medicine and direc- 
tions. After a present had been given me of fresh grapes, 
candied in a way for which the adjoining town is famous, 
and many hearty parting salutations had been exchanged, 
we hurried back amidst gathering shadows through the 
river valley to Odzuki. 

After crossing the Katsura again in a frail and tremb- 
ling boat, which a silent Charon with face like a withered 
apple, guided across the foaming torrent by aid of a rope 
stretched from bank to bank, I engaged a pawky old fel- 
low with great conversational powers, and a never failing 
fund of humour, to carry my " traps." We set off briskly 
on foot amidst a slight shower of rain for Kami Yoshida 
— a great resort of pilgrims preparing to make a meritori- 
ous ascent of Fuji, or returning after having performed 
that feat. The road was good, I was now in capital trim 
for walking, and the scenery was very pleasing — hills soft 
in outline and green with new verdure refreshed by the 
shower, sometimes well wooded, but more usually terraced 
visibly by the ancient carving power of the river, aided 
somewhat by the art of man in fitting the soil for the cul- 



126 Nine Years in Nipon. 

ture of rice ; but the country was here richly diversified 
with the varied products of a most economical and indus- 
trious husbandry. There seemed to be no room for weeds 
anywhere. Melons, gourds, or cucumbers trailingly spread 
their bright golden flowers and veiny leaves, so rich in form 
and mellow shadow tints, over the cottages. Every flower 
plot was brightened by rich balsams, scarlet, — crimson or 
creamy white, delicately tinted with pink ; while close by 
every gateway tiny streams of cool clear spring water 
gurgled, and cascades were crashing on their way to turn 
some lazy but picturesque moss-clad old mill-wheel which 
were met with at almost every turn of the road. We passed 
through many villages, the country seeming to be popu- 
lous even for Japan, and the streets were crowded with 
stolid, attentive, unamused children, of the type to be found 
anywhere throughout the empire. Here the idols, or 
" statues " as it is fashionable to call them, now presented 
some unique features, but whether purely local or not I 
have not found. For some distance our way lay between 
great walls of rough ruddy grey lava, tumbled about in 
great rocky masses, that gave an air of hideous ruin and 
desolation to a moor-like expanse, on which the shades of 
night were now closing, tempered by a broad bar of lurid 
red in the western sky. I could not help picturing to 
myself, as I picked my way over the lava, scenes of blood 
and violence, such as might have supplied plots to any 
number of "penny dreadfuls," and really, some of the 
inky pools over which huge contorted demon like masses 
of lava kept watch might have hid many a dreadful 
secret. 

My jinrikisha man gave the expressive name of awa 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 127 

(froth) to the honey-combed slag-like lava. These curi- 
ous bits of scoriae are utilised in making rockeries, and 
many tons of the material are sent to Tokio and other 
large towns for this purpose. In some places great walls 
were built of the material, a slight growth of vegetation 
had covered the stone, filling the crevices with rich mosses 
and rare ferns, while here and there a gnarled pine tree 
had audaciously struck its roots into the stony soil. One 
could not help thinking of that fearful time recorded in 
Japanese history when the hot liquid stream ran down 
those now silent slopes, carrying terror, death, and desola- 
tion with it. 

A cold dry wind began to set the fossil demons a- 
howling in the eeriest way, and right glad was I when the 
upward-sloping main street of Kami Yoshida at last 
stretched its pale dusty vista before me. 

I have arrived late, footsore and soiled with dust, at 
many a Japanese town, but never before nor since have I 
had such a rough reception as I am about to relate, and 
which is very rare at the present time in the experience of 
foreigners. 

At first I merely thought that our advent excited un- 
usual interest, which puzzled me a little, as I knew that 
travellers from the West had often been there. By-and- 
by something like a crowd collected and dogged my 
weary footsteps, and once or twice I thought I overheard 
some not very complimentary epithets. Thereafter a 
few little pellets of mud came curving towards my devoted 
head, and in a trice I was conscious of being stoned by a 
large Japanese mob. The slightest loss of temper or lack 
of firmness, and my case might have become serious. I 



128 Nine Years in Nipon. 

kept watch on the ringleaders and steered steadily for the 
inn which I had been advised to seek. I there planted 
myself firmly in the doorway, faced the mob — now 
becoming somewhat roused at prospect of losing their 
prey — and requested shelter for the night. It was refused, 
but on showing my passport and requesting the presence 
of the chief magistrate or head of police while I tempo- 
rarily, at least, claimed shelter, the master of the house 
thought it wise to give me his countenance. I civilly 
asked the apparent leaders of the mob — young lads they 
were — to be reasonable, and to explain the offence which 
seemed to them to justify such an extraordinary reception 
of a quiet traveller who had come to admire the famed 
beauties of their district. I received no explanation, but 
the very mild and practically harmless stoning began to 
cease, and the more active lads whom I now fixed with 
my eye slunk off, when I warned them that their govern- 
ment would hardly thank them for embroiling the country 
again with foreign nations. The innkeeper, fearing 
trouble, arranged that I should go elsewhere, and at last 
by the efforts of my pawky old baggage-carrier, who kept 
aloof till all danger was over, I got into splendid quarters — 
the very best the town had to offer as compensation for 
the first rudeness of my reception. The old fellow, in 
short, I could hear dilating in the most eloquent terms on 
my many excellent qualities and on the considerateness 
which I had shown to himself and to others, as reported 
to him before starting with me. I need hardly say that 
his pleading was urged as a ground for fresh liberality 
when parting next morning. 

My quarters for the night were in a large newly- 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 129 

matted room, from the open verandah adjoining which 
I could see the base of Fuji, which rose steeply to 
the heavens, its summit buried in widespreading cottony 
cumuli. No food was forthcoming, and to all my 
requests the curt answer was, " There is none." I had 
seen potatoes growing in the garden and asked for 
some, offering to dig them up myself This brought me 
a good meal at last. A lady who was, according to the 
simple manners of the country, to occupy a portion of my 
large room, was joined by some intending pilgrims of 
both sexes, and the conversation, as a preliminary to 
sleep, at once turned upon the entrance of the " blue- 
eyed, red-haired devil." I am fortunately neither blue- 
eyed nor red-haired, but in Japan all Western foreigners 
ought to have the qualities those terms describe. Well, 
such had been the rhetorical effectiveness of my porter's 
defence, that the worthy lady — a model matron of Japan 
it must be admitted, appearances to the contrary notwith- 
standing — spoke to her numerous associates during the 
night in the most appreciative way of my manners, and 
admitted that externally nothing had been shown to 
reveal the depravity that belonged essentially to foreigners. 
The fact was, as I afterwards heard, the place had recently 
been visited by one or two French naval officers, and the 
worthy inhabitants of Kami Yoshida — not bad sort of 
people, I can assure you — had erroneously supposed that 
Englishmen were something like them, and hence the, in 
the circumstances, very justifiable stoning. Verb. sap. 

Just before daybreak I arose refreshed, and went into 
the tiny courtyard to wash. The sky was grey and misty 
as on a raw winter morning in England, and nothing was 



130 Nine Years in Nip on, 

to be seen in the grey dawn but a leafy patch of yams, 
bounded by a straggHng forest of young cypress and pine 
trees. In a moment afterwards the mist had whitened 
and rolled away in torn masses like the rending of the 
temple veil. Then one of the most impressive and 
heavenly sights I have ever witnessed burst upon me with 
a strange surprise. The great tent-shaped mass of Fuji, then 
of a dark bluish purple, looking awful in its silent majesty 
so suddenly revealed, swept up in one perfect unbroken 
curve from where I stood, as if to the very throne of heaven, 
while its base — seeming to have become immeasurably 
broad — lay immersed in great billows of glistening silvery 
vapour which lay stratified in perspective. Above this 
gleaming veil of clouds rose, as if to meet her strong bride- 
groom the sun, the now blushing cone of Fuji. Such 
exquisite gradations of warm flesh tints ruddying into the 
deepest rose purple shaded with indigo grey, no mere pen 
and ink could be made to paint. Two bars of glistening 
snowflecked the summit, and when the remaining cloudsfled 
as if affrighted before the rising majesty of the sun, dark 
woods still in the gloom of night shewed themselves as if 
crawling over the purple grey lava up the lofty slope. 
Exclamations of chastened surprise and joy rang from 
the lips of the now awakened pilgrims whom the hazy 
yesternight had bitterly disappointed, and even to me there 
seemed for the moment to be a sacred solemnity in this 
beautiful mountain which might almost justify the most 
ascetic pilgrimage — a feeling not a little deepened by the 
slow and sonorous boom of a large temple bell close by 
the inn. 

After an early breakfast of tea, rice, and hard boiled 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 131 

eggs, I set off in a jinrikisha, intending to join the main road 
again at Odawara which lies at the foot of the Hakone 
pass. The road lay for the most part through rough 
masses of lava, which seems to crumble down as you 
descend the slope leading to the sea shore till at last it is 
reduced to a fine dark sand and even into a loam like soil 
which is well cultivated. The watercourses there are a 
curious and interesting study for the physiographer, and 
seem to form a geological model of the earth in miniature, 
almost every style of mountain carving, river bed and lake, 
being richly illustrated. A great gloomy wold spreads 
itself out, between the sea and the southern base of Fuji, 
and as you rise above its level to cross the flank of the 
Oyama range the vast view becomes deeply impressive. 
On the one side sleeps a quiet lake in whose glassy 
bosom was mirrored a range of partly wooded, deeply 
furrowed hills that reminded me of the shadowy Ochil 
range near Stirling. 

On the other side the lofty Hakone range — of volcanic 
origin — hid its ever cool forehead under a thunderous 
canopy of dark clouds. All around near where I stood 
lay stretched a great prairie of lava sand, as it were em- 
blazoned with the richest and most varied display of wild 
flowers I have ever seen. A rich flora is said to be com- 
mon enough at the base of such extinct volcanic cones, 
and while the chemical constituents of the soil may 
partly account for it, the high temperature of such a region 
is long retained, while there is also much moisture. The 
Japanese are passionately fond not only of beautiful 
scenery, but of flowers ; and I was not quite surprised 
when the sober-looking coolie laid down the shafts of his 



132 Nine Years in Nipon. 

rickety " hansom," and rushed amid the tall flowers with 
open arms like a school-boy. After his fit of enthusiasm 
had somewhat subsided, he returned with an armful of 
bright yellow and white compositse, orange lilies, and 
some graceful sprays, on which shone numbers of beauti- 
ful large crimson scarlet brambles, or rather raspberries? 
with which he adorned his vehicle. They tasted, how- 
ever, very much like hot cinders, or rather water in 
which red-hot iron has been cooled, and recalled to one's 
mind the famous apples of Sodom. 

Thanks to the aesthetic culture of my drawer, we lost 
our way twice on this lava plain. 

At one point the river beds, which are cut through the 
lava sand, were quite dry, and although a thunderstorm 
could be heard muttering in our rear, I waited patiently 
under a broiling sun to see the effect of a spate, and was 
not entirely disappointed. When the rain at last fell, the 
foam -edged water would come rushing for a few yards 
further, and then sink into the deep sand, as if it were so 
much blotting paper. Another wave, and a new channel 
would be opened up for a moment, again to dry up as 
suddenly. At last passers-by warned us that the soil 
under our feet might become soaked, and carry us away. 
Indeed, there was genuine cause for alarm, as at last we 
began to feel and perceive, and we lost no time in gaining 
a distant ridge which wound towards the path we sought. 

Here I had some muddy and insipid tea, dismissed my 
charioteer, and engaged the humbler services of a pack- 
horse for the mountain pass, while I trudged along on 
foot with the aid of a stout stick. The ditches were over- 
hung with the coarse webs of enormous greenish and 



Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 133 

yellow spotted spiders, which had a lace-like zig-zag net- 
work to strengthen one segment, and on this part the 
host sat disguising his presence from inexperienced insects 
then just emerging from their pupal state, by rapid vibra- 
tions which rendered him nearly invisible. Beautiful large 
swallow-tailed butterflies, of dark blue velvety texture, 
seemed to be sipping the puddles on the shaded roadway. 
At one point, where a quaint mossy bridge crossed a 
mill stream, I stopped to rest, and, looking down, I saw a 
kind of stoat, I think, emerge from between the stones of 
the piers. Our eyes met, and silently and motionlessly I 
watched him till he seemed to become mesmerised, as he 
stood arrested quite in a statuesque position lifting a fore- 
paw. At last I moved, and he disappeared amidst a 
bunch of ferns like a flash from a pistol. As the pathway 
emerged from under the grateful shadow of pine trees it 
became hard work panting up thirstily amidst the dust 
raised by a train of pack-horses, and under a fierce sub- 
tropical sun blazing in a now almost cloudless sky. I 
was fain at last to take hold of my pack-horse's tail, and 
in this undignified fashion did I toil up many hundreds of 
feet. By-and-by we came to a welcome spring bubbling 
through lichened boulders and graceful ferns. I sat down 
on a mossy rock and turned round to admire the scene 
through which we had been passing. Away above me 
and out of sight I heard a voice shouting, and soon 
there came plunging down the rock-strewn footpath an 
eccentric form in foreign clothes, which I took to be that 
of a native of the country. He turned out to be an 
Italian silk dealer. He was in a state of wild enthusiasm, 
and said the scenery beat anything he had witnessed even 



134 Nine Years in Nipon. 

in Italy. I politely expressed my regret that he had 
not seen Scotland, but really even the " patriotic bias " 
could not restrain me from joining warmly in his praises 
of the landscape. 

Nothing in Japan is absolutely without its uses. Here 
I came across a scene which set me laughing, all alone as 
I was, very heartily. A small " sweetie " shop, as it 
would be called in Scotland, was planted beside a tiny 
cascade, which, besides giving romance to the scene and 
cooling the air around the bench on which customers 
might regale themselves, supplied water to the interior 
through a hollow bamboo. Now, flies are fond of sugar, 
raw or manufactured, and in a hot country and warm season 
they are apt to multiply at a more rapid rate than their 
natural foes can keep pace with. Well, the worthy old 
couple who owned the shop had devised a complex net- 
work of cord movsd by a little water-wheel, and in turn 
giving wild and impetuous movement to a set of fans which 
were made to wave in an absurdly jerky, angry, human- 
like fashion over the precious wares. My laughter brought 
the smiling, ruddy-faced old confectioner out with apolo- 
getic bows — " Really they were very ignorant and clumsy 
people, but those nasty flies were so troublesome and 
greedy ! " I cannot yet get rid of the ludicrous impression 
made by the frantically impatient movements of the fans 
and the rhythmic dance of the irrepressible flies, in and 
out of what they no doubt considered their lawful 
preserves. 

I soon arrived at the gay and bustling town of 
Odawara, at the foot of the pass, once a military post of 
great importance when East and West in Japan were like 



Pilgrhnage to Fuji the Peerless. 135 

two kingdoms. Its castled moat, over which now ivy 
crawls and water weeds thickly grow, speaks of a vanished 
age of war and romance and practical misery. Next 
morning I was dashing along the Tokaido, or great main 
road to Tokio, behind two nearly naked jinrikisha men, 
through a piny avenue and in view of the stately march 
to solemn music of foam-crowned rollers from the Pacific, 
rushing up the tawny beach at last like a charge of 
plumed cavalry ; and in the evening I was clasping in my 
paternal arms sweeter flowers than ever bloomed out of 
lava dust. 



136 Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER XI. 

In a Cottage by the Sea. 

A Fair Breeze and Holiday Aspirations — Voyage of Discovery — Crabs and 
Canal Banks — A Marine Tunnel-borer — Snakes and Frogs — Stone Net- 
sinkers — Tai Fish — A Lovely Marvel of the Sea — A Dying Cuttle-fish. 

FOR many hot, breezeless days the river had been 
choked up with idle junks waiting for a fair wind 
to carry them to distant ports. At last, just as the tide 
was turning to go out, a favouring breeze sprang up, and 
there was a sudden commotion ; the strange, prolonged 
tones of shipmates on shore for boats, and of shipmates 
on board for help ; the creaking, rasping, and groaning 
everywhere of primitive capstans, followed by the rattling 
and flapping of great whitey-grey square sails ; and in 
almost less time than I have taken to tell it, a countless 
fleet of junks, as like each other as peas, was curving out 
in well-kept line through the dingy brown mixture of 
brackish mud and city sewage which forms the head of 
the bay, past the lemon-yellow buildings of the U.S. 
Legation ; along by the noble pine-bordered gardens 
of " The Palace by the Strand," through the silent weed- 
crowned forts built by the French for the defence of 
Tokio, and away out at last to where the sea became 
blue and the haze veiled them at last from sight, leaving 
us to dream of imaginary beauties of scenery in places far 
away. I had been following with longing eyes those 



In a Cottage by the Sea. 137 

white sails gleaming in the mellow sunset, and, tired, hot, 
and stupid with many a hard summer-day's work in a 
crowded dispensary, thought I should like to make a little 
voyage of discovery in a Japanese junk. 

My wish had not long been expressed when its fulfil- 
ment was secured. Two seafaring country fellows thought 
of making a venture for cargo to a village just in the 
vicinity of the place I wanted to reach, and they offered 
to take myself and family, including our lares and penates, 
for the usual unnameable " mere trifle," to Tomioka, a 
pretty quiet little place on the sea-shore, where is an 
hospitable Buddhist temple and rectory, and a few native 
houses which can be had during the hot season for the 
sea-bathing. We had the usual fate of running aground 
several times in the shallow bay, which did not, however, 
seem to modify our rate of progress very much. By-and- 
by we passed through an artificial canal, cut through high 
rocks for a considerable distance, and thus we saved a 
long detour. The worthy boatmen duly dined on a great 
bucketful of very grey-coloured rice, flavoured with raw 
fish as a relish, and frequent cups of pale green tea. We 
toasted our share of fish on the charcoal embers on the 
brazier, and enjoyed some boiled yams, the unwonted 
fresh scent of the sea giving me an appetite I had not en- 
joyed for months. As we gently glided along it was 
amusing to watch the stealthy scuttling away of myriads 
of crabs into their holes on the canal bank. They de- 
stroy those banks very greatly, but no remedy has been 
proposed. Is it they who drag in the straws of which the 
ends are to be seen protruding in many places, and, if so, 
what can be their purpose in doing so ? Those burrowing 



138 Nine Years in Nipon. 

crabs, which are to be seen in hundreds, are large, dingy 
grey, with reddish-coloured markings, and are roundish in 
shape. Further along is the deep cutting just referred to. 
It has been made through beds of a rock that looks as if 
composed of stratified pumice formed by submarine 
deposit. As the boat cleaves its way through the glassy 
water, we could see down into depths of verdant forests, 
consisting of a kind of chara and other water plants. On 
the surface with heads up out of the water and tails 
down, there were generally three or four frightened pipe 
fish, of more than a foot long, wriggling out of the way, 
and leaving long wavy angles in their wake. 

The chffs at Tomioka are of a soft blue sandy tuff, 
which is somewhat tenacious like clay. They are bored 
through in all possible directions by a little crustacean 
about the size of a horse-bean and like a rock slater 
(Ligia) in appearance. Their work has been ascribed by 
a good scientific observer to Pholades. I have seen the 
empty shell oi 2. pholas now and again in the vicinity, but 
never have I seen a living animal of the species, although 
I daresay they may sometimes be found. Wherever I 
have met with the characteristic borings in the rocks about 
the shores of the bay, I have always found this slater-like 
animal at work not far from the spot, and have carefully 
watched their operations while supplying them now and 
a^ain with salt water, fresh from the sea. A fragment of 
cliff bored by them often presents the appearance of a bit 
of sponge, although the tunnel made by each animal is as 
a rule almost perfectly straight and cylindrical. The little 
creature rolls itself up into a ball like an armadillo when 
you meddle with it, and is slow to unrol itself again. 



In a Cottage by the Sea. 139 

When at work they scuffle the water out from below the 
abdomen with great rapidity, and in a continual stream. 
I made a careful microscopic examination of them, but 
am not quite satisfied yet as to the meaning of what I have 
seen and drawn. In order to work they must be constantly 
supplied with fresh sea water. They spring in the water 
in a very peculiar way, and they seemed to me to study 
well the bearings of a particular spot before they began 
boring operations. Some of them tried to climb up the 
glass side of the vessel in which they were confined, but 
they invariably slipped down again. The little ones often 
began to bore from the sides of a tunnel made by the 
larger ones, and in course of time the rock for a few inches 
about water mark is thus quite riddled with tiny tunnels, 
so that portions become readily undermined and give way 
by the action of the waves. In one place further down 
the bay, there is an exposed section of the rock already 
mentioned, having one regularly waved central layer lying 
evenly disposed between an upper and a lower horizontal 
layer. It seemed to be somewhat like the result of 
expansion by molecular rearrangement. The appearance 
presented was like this, ^^— — ^^ 

" Our cottage " was a very pleasant little residence 
indeed. We could step from our rooms almost right into 
the tepid waves of a good beach, and from its open 
verandah, one could watch a great American packet 
churning the entrance to the Pacific with its huge paddles, 
and now and again a British gunboat, under its pious 
symbol of the triple cross, plodding on to Yokohama. I 
found much to interest me in the insects of the little garden 
amidst the foliage of which our youngsters discovered 



140 



Nine Years in Nipo7i. 



with much joyful emotion, many tiny green tree frogs 
seeking an honest hvelihood. The frogs at Tomioka are 
varied and numerous, and include an edible variety, whose 
nutritious qualities however we did not venture to test. 
Close beside our modest cot, we once saw a large snake 
attempting to swallow a larger frog. I saved master froggy, 
whose lower extremities were already engulfed, and 
sacrificed the snake, as the worthy villagers believed (so I 
was afterwards told,) to the shrine of ^sculapius, which 
seemed to them a highly rational proceeding. 

Nothing occurred of special interest, except that after we 
were all asleep a loud banging of antediluvian muskets of 
preposterous length, roused us with the idea that a revolu- 
tion was taking place in the village. It turned out to 
have been a robbery. An old couple living not far off, 
had been bound and robbed, but succeeded at length in 
giving an alarm, and we all turned out very courageously, 
I must say, to help the noise. 

Next morning after a refreshing struggle with the briny 
surf, I wandered along the beach, and had a chat with the 

fisher laddies who were helping to 
lay out the nets. I have not found 
many examples of the modern use 
of stone in Japan, but here, sure 
enough, were stone sinkers of a 
kind quite primitive enough to 
satisfy any archaeologist. A pair 
of dark grey, almost bluish-black, 
martins were circling j about our 
heads in swift pursuit after in- 
sects. They had a nest, the boys said, in a cliff, behind 




Stone net sinkers used in 
Yedo Bay. 



In a Cottage by the Sea. 141 

a temple by the shore. On the morning, I heard sweet 
notes which a friend compared to those of a wood-lark, 
but which our host said were those of the martins. 
They called them Iwa tsumu, which sounded very much 
like a local contraction of Iwa-maki tsiibame, the " Black- 
chinned Martin " {Chelidon Blakistoni).- A pair of rooks 
also, they told me, had built their nest on a tree on the 
cliff, close by the same temple, for three successive years. 

Out at sea, some black-tailed gulls, (Larus crassirostris^ 
VieilL), were disporting themselves merrily. The boys 
called them '' sea-cats," a name which their mewMike cry 
might readily enough suggest. 

Near the chief landing place, at a height of about ten 
feet above the level of high tide, there are layers of recent 
shells naturally embedded in the soft slate-grey coloured 
rock. They have been chemically softened, and some of 
them were partly, I think, altered in shape by the pressure 
to which they had been subjected. I have often seen 
the effects of such pressure on early fossils, but I have 
not observed any reference to the fact of similar changes 
going on at the present time. There is also a small artifi- 
cial shell heap of recent origin quite near the same spot. At 
another point on the same beach, I found ^milar layers of 
recent shells, at a height of about forty feet above the 
present level of the sea. 

A day or two was spent in exploring many woodland 
footpaths, which so wind around little semi-cultivated 
knolls, water-worn vestiges of the old upraised shore — 
that you are apt to return to the very spot you started 
from, without intending it. On one occasion, we had 
spoken to a ruddy cheeked old woman who was hoeing 



142 



Nine Years in Nipon. 



yams near the shore. By-and-by, after working steadily 
inland as we supposed, we came upon her again, and gave 
her a fresh salutation. She laughed a good deal at this, 
which opened our eyes to the fact that we had been 
making a grand circle and were near home again. On 
the way we gathered some rather insipid yellow rasp- 
berries, and a kind of prickly walnut (?), of which I made 
a rough sketch. 




After exhausting the novelties of the neighbourhood, 
we set sail on a glorious morning for Nojima, which is a 
few hours further down the bay. Winding through 
wooded islands and shallow channels, we at last landed 
on a wide shell-strewn shore, over a part of which ex- 
tended many acres of shallow troughs where sea water, 
caught at high tide, was being evaporated by a powerful 
sun for manufacture into salt. 



In a Cottage by the Sea. 143 

There were many sandy-coloured, prawn-like creatures 
moving about in the concentrated brine, but I could not 
examine them very closely. Sea-birds, of which gulls 
formed the major part, wagtails, and numerous little long- 
legged shore birds were poking about the wet beach, from 
which the tide was fast receding. Myriads of tiny crabs, 
some of a pretty pale violet colour, were hurrying after 
the receding waves, and hosts of soft-tailed hermit crabs, 
in all stages of growth, were hiding snugly in shells which 
their lawful owners had vacated. 

We stopped to dine at a tea-house near the landing 
place. As we sipped the refreshing beverage of Japan, 
we sat overlooking a deep clear pool fed directly with 
water fresh from the sea. It was lined with large rough- 
hewn stones, loosely built up so as to leave numerous 
spaces from which sea-weeds hung in radiant clusters, 
giving variety of colour to the lucid green depths. 




Koi Fish. (From a Japa7iese Sketch.) 



One or two elegant koi fish were curving about play- 
fully. They are among the finest table fish in Japan, 
and are of two varieties — rosy scarlet and black. 

A single specimen of a very striking fish called hobo, and 



144 Nine Years in Nipon. 

which, I suppose, is a variety of gurnard, arrested my at- 
tention. It was apparently a little more than a foot long, 
nearly cylindrical in shape, but flattened a little from side 
to side. Its pectoral fins were exceedingly large, and' 
spread out like fans. The body was of a light greyish 
colour, and had several cross stripes each about half-an- 
inch broad, dark on the back, and fading quite away on 
the belly. Its spiny wing-like pectorals were of a bluish 
grey, brightening greatly towards their margins so as to 
form a broad edge of lovely sapphire blue. The hobo 
seemed to rest on a series of barbel-like structures spring- 
ing from below the mouth near the pectorals, and these 
bent under its weight so as to make them seem like the 
jointed legs of a great insect. Indeed, when it gently 
opened and closed its sapphire vans while crawling along 
the rocky lining of the pond, it assumed a very startling 
resemblance to some large and gaudy tropical butterfly 
basking in the air. The likeness was even intensified 
when, without other apparent aid than its leg-like appen- 
dages, it crawled perpendicularly up the stone wall and 
hung (under water, of course,) almost upside down. I have 
seen few sights more fascinating than this one was, and I 
tried, but in vain, to secure the strange and beautiful 
creature. 

A large cuttlefish was lying in a pail of salt water, and 
as it was still alive, although in the agonies of death, I 
had an opportunity which was quite fresh to me, of 
observing minutely the strange mysterious flushes of 
varying colour that swept over the surface of the dying 
animal. It would pass from a pallor that, to our emo- 
tional nature, appeared deadly, to an angry flush of dull 



In a Cottage by the Sea. 145 

scarlet changing to fiery orange, and then suddenly to 
a warm indescribable shade of chocolate — like mother- 
of-pearl mixed with golden bronze. On looking into the 
skin more closely, it could be seen that it was all speckled 
over with minute points of orange colour, which never 
faded entirely away. The sepia spots, on the other hand, 
were often very large and distinct — each being usually 
about the size of a sago grain, from which size they would 
quickly contract to an almost invisible pin point. Very 
often they assumed an oval form, or again they would 
change into that of a ring of pigment surrounding the 
original coloured point, but the ring would not remain of 
equal breadth throughout, and at some points might be- 
come so narrow as finally to disappear before the un- 
assisted vision. When you looked at one of those little 
dilated points of pigment from the side so as to view its 
depth, the skin was seen to be quite transparent, and the 
fluid underlying colouring matter could be seen, but I 
could not detect any visible rush of pigment from below 
when dilatation took place. The point of colour seemed 
rather to spread out flat like drops of grease on the sur- 
face of hot soup, and yet I could not say from observa- 
tion that the depth of colour was diminished by actual 
loss of density. Rather it seemed as if there were an out- 
rush of colouring matter from some unseen reservoir below. 
The process, however painful to the poor cephalopod, was 
intensely interesting to me, and singularly beautiful as a 
display of changing colour. 

The Japanese revel in cuttle-fish, fresh or salted, and 
they are to be seen in great numbers for sale in a dried 
state all throughout the Empire. Fresh specimens occur 



146 Nine Years in Nipon. 

in the fish-market almost rivalling the famous monster 
depicted by Victor Hugo, and did not my exhausted 
space forbid, I could tell many a strange and startling 
tale of their doings from the lips of fishermen and others 
who have coped with them in Japanese waters. 

One of the most touching I have heard was of a hard- 
working mother, who had to leave her infant by the sea- 
shore while reaping a little croft. She heard faint screams, 
and, looking up, was horrified to find her little one en- 
circled by the strong stinging arms of an appalling mon- 
ster of this kind, which had just been cast on the rocky 
beach. The brave woman sent her mingled mother's 
love and hate thrilling through the curved blade of her 
reaping hook with such strength and skill, that the great 
ugly brute soon lay writhing in pieces near her unharmed 
darling. 



Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasit. 147 



CHAPTER XII. 
Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 

Unpromising Start — Bridge of Japan— Suburbs of Tokio — A.n Amorous 
Ascetic — Flowering Palm Trees — A Brazen Serpent — Hotel Gossip and 
Pagan Devotions — Wonderful Avenue— Primitive Ploughs — Weeping 
Cherry Tree — A Quiet Priest and his Garden — Shrines and Saints — 
Uncountable Buddhas and Nature's Cynicism. 

ONDAY, 19th May, 1877, was a bright day in 
my calendar of routine experience, but a par- 
ticularly dull one in Tokio so far as the 
terrestrial sky was concerned. I had been 
completely knocked up with trying dispensary 
and other work, and it had dawned upon me 
that I must at once get a week's rest in 
bracing mountain air, or give in altogether when the 
grilling dog-days came. What with one sudden call after 
another to professional duty, my well-laid plans for the 
day's journey were spoiled, and the afternoon was 
far advanced before I took my seat in the jinrikisha, 
after a display of voluble guttural eloquence on the 
subject of pay. Out of a crowd of tight-limbed coolies, 
each secretly ambitious to be liberally paid in hard cash 
for a meritorious pilgrimage to Nikko's sacred shrines and 
groves, followed by a quiet rest of three days on the hills, 
I selected two whose running and staying powers I had 
often tested and could rely upon. They were in high 
spirits, lifted the shafts with a too hearty jerk, and were 




148 Nine Years in Nipon. 

off with me like a stone from a sling, amidst the mortified 
felicitations of their comrades and adieus of my little 
household. My steeds — heavy chargers I might have 
called them — carried on a brisk colloquy, eager with 
anticipation of the wonders of a region which fills the 
popular imagination more than any other in the realm 
with ideas of dreamy grandeur and almost super-mundane 
sanctity. 

The grey, wooden streets and lanes of Tokio seem inter- 
minable on such a dull drizzling day as this was. I had 
soon to draw down the mal-odorous oiled paper hood, leav- 
ing no room for my pith helmet which is a necessary pro- 
tection in hot weather, and there was but a narrow opening 
before which a depressing panorama of the world, as it 
must have appeared at the opening of the deluge, flitted 
past. All distances in Japan are estimated, as a rule, 
from Nipon bridge — the London bridge of the country, 
a crowded but common-looking structure close by which 
the imperial edicts and other official announcements are 
posted up. From the summit of its '* hog back " — now 
improved away fortunately — you see a great bustling fish- 
market, the Central Post Office built in western style, and 
miles of great solidly constructed stores, white plastered 
or black lacquered, and quaintly marked with crests and 
Chinese characters. The moat, which here widens into a 
great river is covered with acre upon acre of closely packed 
junks, as like each other as peas, which are discharging 
rice, evil smelling dried bonito, cuttle-fish, sake or rice- 
beer, and other enticing commodities, for the consumption 
of some 700,000 hungry and thirsty Japs. 

Taking a short cut through narrow lanes, we were 



Trip to the Toinb of lyeyasu. 149 

soon careering over slushy suburban roads, anon dashing 
along the wooded banks of the noble river, whose whitey- 
brown was fretted now and again by clumsy little old 
fashioned steamers, screaming frantically with their hoarse 
whistles whenever any object appeared within a quarter 
of a mile of them. 

The Sumida at this point of its course, reminds one 
somewhat of the upper reaches of the Thames, between 
Chelsea and Mortlake. When about four or five miles 
out of town you pass Senji, the old execution ground and 
the chief crematory, {itot the place where ice-creams are pre- 
pared, as the cockney young lady supposed) whose germ- 
destroying fires burn almost nightly. There is nothing 
offensive about the place to sight or smell. Senji consists 
to a great extent of one long main street lined on both 
sides with large rather dignified-looking edifices, through 
the open portals of which may be discerned as we glide 
past them, cleanly matted rooms looking down into court- 
yards, green with choicest foliage, cool on the hottest days 
and richly adorned with old stone lanterns or fantastic 
bits of rock work shaded with ferns. The merry tinkle of 
guitars and strident falsetto notes that pain refined western 
ears now and again waken the silent echoes, followed some- 
times by hoarse winey laughter and coarse masculine jests. 
By the dignified doorways are hung in massive lacquered 
frames, coloured photographs of gaudily dressed girls with 
powdered faces and reddened lips, richly bejewelled as to 
the stiffly glued hair. Their names, which almost remind 
one of those the fairies bear in The Midsummer Nighfs 
Dream,^xe written beneath, as wares might be ticketed in a 
shop window, and at night amidst a blaze of light the frail 



150 Nine Years in Nip on. 

creatures themselves, more modestly dressed, the Japanese 
say, than our model Christian matrons at evening parties, 
are seated at the glassless windows fanning themselves 
coquettishly and carrying on conversation I dare not listen 
to with every passing message boy or government clerk. 
My esteem for the Japanese people has almost compelled 
me to pass by this subject, but I am not without hope that 
public morality is still strong enough to aid those who are 
trying to impress on their countrymen the need of social 
as well as of political reform. 

The most beautiful and highly accomplished daughters 
of respectable parents, as things go in Japan, take tempo- 
rarily to this degrading life almost as those of similar rank 
and circumstances in our country go to become governesses. 
Nor does it involve final disgrace. It is recorded in a 
daily native paper, for example, as a heroic act of wifely 
and maternal devotion that the mother of several children 
thus sold herself for a term of years, in order to rescue 
her husband from debt. The wives of many influential 
citizens and officials in Tokio have had such a history, 
and it is but simple justice to state that when duly married, 
they often lead blameless lives. 

Looking, at the whole question broadly one can only 
sigh, — God help and pity the state which almost syste- 
matically selects its fairest women for a life of sterile and 
sinful bondage, and makes wives of them only when 
disease has done its retributive work in stamping a great 
people, whom every other circumstance favours, with 
marked physical decay ! 

Not far from this spot there is the statue of a Buddhist 
priest with a hammer and gong, who used to toll mourn- 



Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 151 

ful requiems day by day and night by night for the re- 
pose of those who had fallen hard by, by the headsman's 
swift stroke. The pious peasants, hurrying past at night, 
used to dread the eerie sound and quicken their footsteps. 
The story goes that the lonely ascetic was beguiled to 
give his heart to an accomplished and beautiful woman, 
who loved him in return. The sacrilegious lovers could 
not brave public opinion, so, in Japanese fashion, they 
filled their wide sleeves with stones, and locked in each 
other's arms cast themselves into the dark river. By-and- 
by they made a Buddhist saint of the poor weak man. 

The country here is almost like a great cultivated fen, 
and the croaking of frogs accompanied us for many miles. 
After the town is fairly left behind, the hedges in front of 
private houses or well-to-do farms are trimmed with the 
greatest care, all withered leaves and dead branches being 
removed. They are generally of privet, holly, or camellia, 
and sometimes rise to the height of fifteen or even twenty 
feet, dense and square as stone walls, and giving most 
grateful shade, except at noon in summer ; in winter they 
afford shelter from chill winds. All the way to the foot 
of the hills, I saw with delight for the first time a palm- 
tree (the Chamcerops fortunei, I think), laden with pale 
golden clusters of tiny granular seeds, drooping like great 
bunches of grapes, and forming a bright contrast to the 
dark green of the leaves. 

At the gateway of a village temple on the way, there is 
a very striking carved stone image of a serpentine dragon 
twining around a straight two-edged sword of primitive 
pattern. Soon after seeing this, I found a similar figure 
of a Buddhist object of reverence from India, in a manu- 



152 Nine Years in Nipon. 

script copy of a rare old work, the original of which is 
one of the temple treasures of Tokio. 

The whole subject of the connection between the naja^ 
or cobra cult of the I ndo- Malayan region and of ancient 
Egypt on the one hand, and the dragon or vapour-force 
of China, is very interesting. I think the transition might 
almost be shown stage by stage, and the last one was 
very recent. The figure, as it first struck me, instinctively 
, recalled the brazen serpent which Moses used in the 
religious instruction of a body of slaves escaping from 
Egypt, and it is in close analogy to the ordinary classic 
symbolism of the healing art. It is a very common thing 
on country roads in Japan to find a dead snake hung 
across a forked branch, which is stuck upright in the 
ground in a prominent position. It is intended for the 
convenience of any wayfarer who may desire to use it as 
medicine. 

We passed at Soka a busy cotton cloth factory and 
print-work. Close by was a shrine, guarded by large, 
strongly-carved lions of grotesque and mythical type, and 
shaded by a grove of very tall and stately pine trees, amid 
the withered needles of which large velvety black butter- 
flies were fluttering. Those strange lions with grinning 
visages, strong teeth, and fantastic curls over all their joints, 
are perhaps as sacred and solemn in the association they 
present to good Buddhists, as the spotless lamb is to the 
sincere Christian. Like the Lion of the tribe of Judah, 
the Buddha is spoken of in their scriptures as strong to 
conquer and crush his spiritual foes, while the curls are 
amongst the marks of his true Buddhaship. 

My resting-place for the night was to be Kasukabe, a 



Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 153 

well-built, clean-looking, quiet little village. The princi- 
pal production of the bare tea-house garden seemed to be 
green moss and liverworts, which were in subtle harmony, 
as art critics would say, with the raw drizzling mist which 
hung over the whole prospect. This lovely Eden, which 
needed no Adam to water it, was bounded by a dull ver- 
milion wall, the upper part of which was a pink, which 
made my head ache badly. While I waited in eager ex- 
pectancy for a Japanese dinner — in which there always 
lurks a large element of the unpredictable — I could find 
no other amusement than to stare at the vermilion till my 
eyes got hot, and then to rest them again on the cool, 
damp moss, listening meanwhile to an invisible orchestra 
of great bull frogs, which quacked like ducks. This 
became rather monotonous after a lengthened trial, 
so I got my muddy boots on again and sallied forth 
to look for the lions of the place — Buddhist or otherwise. 
The first one I met was bellowing very lustily down the 
lanes and up the by-lanes something sounding remarkably 
like " the last speech and dying confession of that 'orrid 
and hinfamous murderer Bill Sykes " of our innocent and 
joyous boyhood, when halfpenny newspapers were un- 
known ; but the damp and dirty little chap-books turned 
out to be the lives of the classic virtuous women — a 
popular work in quiet country places. Two withered old 
cronies were intently discussing with a cooper some 
absorbing question about renewing the wooden lining of 
a well, while some boys were playing under a shed — 
rather sheepishly in the presence of their sedate seniors. 
I might have been an invisible ghost so far as any 
evidence of my presence being perceived could be detected. 

K 



154 Nine Years in Nipon. 

Finding nothing to entice me any further from my 
prospective dinner, I returned, not, alas ! to my mutton, 
the rarest delicacy in Japan, but to sticky boiled rice, 
sweet yams, bean sauce, Japanese sardines, and delightful 
mushrooms, followed by the inevitable thimblefuls of pale 
tea. 

Ere the clean rush-matted floor groaned under the 
smoking viands, I overheard an amusing discussion in the 
distance as to the nature of foreigners. A kindly, for- 
bearing old gentleman, travelling on business and resting 
here for the night, and who was always addressed as 
sensei (rabbi), seemed to have the impression that we were a 
peculiar kind of animal for which enlightened people must 
see to provide the proper kind of food, however absurd it 
might seem, and diffidently made some rather impracti- 
cable suggestions to the energetic landlady. He chuckled 
very pleasantly, however, when a report entirely favourable 
to the Japanese things was brought, and seemed specially 
to approve of my asking with emphasis for another pot of 
the special tea of the district, in which I suspect he was 
interested. The girl who waited table — or, to be quite 
accurate, floor — had a large lacquered band-box kind 
of arrangement in which to hold the boiled rice, which is 
always administered ad libitum like potatoes, and I sup- 
pose for combined security and comfort she always, after 
administering a dose, closed the box and sat down firmly 
on the lid thereof. As the band-box was weak and the 
fair waitress unusually heavy, I ate my repast amidst con- 
stant fears of an appalling catastrophe, never having had 
any professional experience of hot rice poultices applied 
on so extensive a scale. A soft-eyed, bright, intelligent 



Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 1 5 5 

little girl, just learning the fine art of making and present- 
ing tea, entered on a modest little chat with me, and was 
quite anxious to hear about the strange countries I had 
visited on my way from Igirisu (England). She was quite 
as much surprised as I expected her to be when I told 
her I had once lived on the Himalayas, for this sounded as 
mysterious and supernatural in her ears as a narrative of 
a visit in the flesh to the Heavenly Jerusalem would seem 
in those of a little Christian maiden in this land. She 
told me in return that she had heard of a great prince 
who had left her own province to visit India, and had 
passed through four seas — one being indigo, another 
yellow, a third white, and the fourth — I forget of what 
colour. This peculiar, almost tabular, use of numbers is 
a very common feature in traditions derived from 
Buddhism. I am disposed to think that it simply arose 
from experience of its mnemonic utility when Buddhist 
literature was merely in the stage of oral tradition, and so 
a false habit became fixed. 

While the good-natured, kindly old scholar was pouring 
forth in loud but not pharisaic tones his prayers of 
thanksgiving, I, too, knelt down beside my paper-cased 
rushlight, and raised silent prayers to the Father of all 
lights and Giver of all good, and the tender Saviour of 
mankind, before whom race and rank are as nothing, and 
who enlighteneth every man coming into the world. 

The mornings come round very quickly when you are 
travelling in Japan. After a hurried but hearty breakfast, 
we set off in real earnest, hoping to make up for the 
delays of the previous day. One cannot control the 
weather, however, and we had rain and mud great part of 



'1 56 Ni7ie Years m Nipon, 

the way. In place of nobly riding, I had humbly to push, 
the wheels of our vehicle being up to the axles in mud, 
and often we found it much easier to abandon the king's 
highway and take to the fields ! The old roads in Japan 
are nearly all bad in foul weather, but where the over- 
hanging trees cut them up with rain-drops their condition 
is indescribable. 

Surely every one now must have heard of the great 
avenue which gives romantic beauty to some fifty miles of 
the road leading to the shrine of lyeyasu, the combined 
Moses and Cromwell of Japan. 

Furzy plains blushing with pink and crimson or blaz- 
ing with scarlet azaleas, lay on either side of the way, 
which was arched over with tall pines on the plain, and 
with the Crypto7neria japonica^ a kind of cedar, further up 
the hills. It would be degrading to speak of those grand 
fluted shafts as like the columns of any temple made by 
human hands. They often lean over gracefully breaking 
the rigid lines of the view with interlacing branches. 
Sometimes, and more frequently, they rise straight as 
masts to a height of thirty or forty feet, with never a twig 
nor leaf Some few of those stately old giants had been 
blown down by a recent taifun^ and when I passed, were 
being cut up into logs, sending a grateful odour all 
around. 

Near the shrine the road is often greatly eaten away by 
the rain, leaving bare the gnarled and twisted roots of the 
great cedars, which here are taller than elsewhere, and 
their colossal shafts are joined in many places so as 
sometimes even to form an impassable wall for short dis- 
tances. Even where the stiff, straight cedars predominate, 



Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 157 

the ruddy branches of a great pine will assert its individu- 
"ality, its fleshy tints contrasting very wonderfully in the 
subdued light which plays under the greenwood, with 
their own dark foliage and the gleams of sapphire sky 
which luminously fill up infrequent gaps. 

I have since walked on foot over every inch of 
this wonderful road, and have learned to love it. On 
a recent occasion I passed along there in the month 
of April. The air was quite musical with the sweet 
though familiar song of the lark, while ploughs of the 
usual primitive kind were at work in all directions. 
There are many raised and interweaving footpaths out- 
side of the two great hedgerows of trees, and beyond 
these a broad strip of leafy, uncultivated scrub wood or 
hara, amidst which beautiful wild azaleas flaunt their gay 
rosy pink, pale or deep lavender, crimson or scarlet petals. 
The latter variety, when in full blossom and of a flame 
colour, is a favourite garden plant, and used to be called 
" the burning bush" amongst foreigners, not a leaf being 
visible in the glory of floral flame. When the soil was not 
covered with rank, saw-edged grass it had a thin skin of 
damp liverworts, with here and there on a shady bank a 
sweet little home-like patch of violets. At noon, dead 
stillness and a cemetery-like calm reigned around, and 
you might look along the shadowy vista fading into gloom 
at either end, like an immense tunnel, and see no living 
thing in motion. I rested frequently on the trunk of 
a fallen cedar, avoiding prostrate pine trees on account of 
their tendency to form too strong an attachment to one's 
snowy inexpressibles. At one lovely spot there was a 
weeping cherry tree in full bloom, over whose honied 



158 Nine Years in Nipon. 

blossoms hung a loud booming cloud of bees and a bevy 
of large-winged butterflies. 

Among the snaky roots of the great pines myriads of 
ant-lions had formed their smooth funnel-shaped pits and 
were vigorously showering the dry soil upon their luckless 
guests. A tawny red fox passed by quite close, looking 
at me askance the while in a sneering and quietly con- 
temptuous way as an evident unbeliever in his pretensions 
to sanctity as an incarnation of Inari, the august pro- 
tector of rice fields. In spite of the intense simmering 
heat the air felt wonderfully crisp and bracing as com- 
pared with that of the muggy plains about Tokio. The 
white piled-up cumuli and the underlying shadowed 
mountains showed sharp clear outlines free from haze — a 
happy state of things for invalids suffering from malaria, 
but unfortunately rather rare in Japan. 

Near Nikko, sparklingly clear and delightfully cool 
streams course along both sides of the way with musical 
murmur, and little valleys with boulders hewn into tomb- 
stones or memorial tablets with chiselled Chinese inscrip- 
tions, are a frequent feature in the landscape. Most of 
the Buddhist images here are of a peculiar type — the 
head reclining pathetically on the palm of one hand, the 
elbow being grasped by the other. The country houses 
are much larger than any I have seen elsev\^here in the east 
and have immense neatly thatched roofs. Frequently a 
clear stream rushes through the " crown of the causeway," 
with many openings in its pavement covering by which 
the villagers may draw water. About the roots of the 
cryptomeria trees the soil is of a remarkably pale brick- 
red colour, as if mixed with iron, while under the roots it 



1 rip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 



159 



is white and dry and very like touchwood in appearance. 
I saw, in passing through Utsunomiya, that this material 
was liberally applied to the roots of some flowering cherry 
trees which adorn the main streets. 

Well, the westering sun had sunk to rest behind a wall 
of forest clad mountains ere we entered Nikko, or rather 
Hachi-ishi, pushing our way through a laughing, tea- 
sipping crowd, clustered around a sober, quick-eyed story- 
teller, who was constantly waving in his hand a most 
eloquent fan. The shops are chiefly devoted to the sale 
of various nicknacks as mementos of the pilgrimage, — 
photographs of glens, temples, and waterfalls, and an 
ecstatic kind of " Turkish delight," which is one of the 
specialties of the district. 




Pilgrims Buying Souvenirs. {Frojn a Japanese sketch^ 



What can I say of the beauties of Nikko, natural or 
artistic, that has not already been better said ? To me, 



i6o Nine Years in Nipon. 

however, the shrines and temples were disappointing. 
Great wealth, lavish expenditure of skilful workmanship 
excellent carving; there was plenty of all that, and, in addi- 
tion, red paint enough even to have pleased the infallible 
British workman demonstrating on the franchise. My 
first impression was that the august and mysterious 
Wombwell of our school days had set up his menagerie 
in the midst of those silent eastern hills, an impression 
which the brightly painted monkeys, tapirs, tigers, ele- 
phants, wild boars, and cranes cleverly carved on the 
panels and eaves of the wooden temples did not rapidly 
tend to dissipate. In spite of the lack of religious 
solemnity, and the artistic incoherence of the whole^ 
added to the sense of veneer and paint everywhere, I yet 
finally came away feeling the wonderful sublimity and 
pathos nature itself has contrived to throw around the 
whole scene. Over every chiselled stone she has so 
lovingly hung a rich drapery of drooping mosses, or stained 
deep into its texture gory hues breaking into patches of 
almost fiery red, or deepening into velvety maroon, and 
overlapped, perchance, by scales of deep green liverworts 
or rich orange and creamy toned lichens. And then over 
and through all this there is the sweet grand murmur, 
sometimes very gentle but never quite unheard, of fresh 
mountain air sifted through the million leaves of great 
solemn forests of memorial pines and cedars. 

I cannot here attempt to write in detail of the shrines 
and temples at Nikko, already so faithfully and fully 
described by Messrs. Satow and Hawes. 

In one court I idly plucked a strange looking leaf from 
a tree which grows not in Japan, and was told that it had 



Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. i6i 

sprung from a shoot of the Bo tree under which Gautama 
attained the peace of Nirvana fully two thousand years 
ago. There is in another court a carved stone trough from 
which flows all around a smooth, perfectly flawless sheet 
of clear water — a marvel of exact workmanship. In 
another there is a memorial lantern all hacked with 
sword-cuts ; but I have not space to tell of the magnifi- 
cent gifts of bronze, of the great bronze candelabrum 
which is in style somewhat like the figure of that shown 
on the arch of Titus, which once glittered in the 
temple of Jerusalem ; of the great pagoda within which 
hangs like a colossal pendulum to steady it against earth- 
quakes, one of the tallest of tree trunks ; of the mellow 
deep-toned bell whose sound floats down from the hills 
like a voice from another world ; of the wind-swept 
heights ; of the rushing torrents and the roaring cataracts, 
on which eye and ear might feed unsatiated for weeks. 

Walking on the free hills was intensely enjoyable after 
being cooped up for five years in the midst of Tokio's 
grim urban acres. I went off to see one of the famous 
waterfalls, literally enough — 

" A pillar of white light upon the wall 
Of purple cliffs, aloof descried, " 

and brought home an armful of rare ferns, lichens, mosses, 
and orchids. While returning I found a wasp's nest which 
her ladyship was busy adjusting under the surface of an 
overhanging cliff. High up in the air a woodcock was 
" tilting " in the curious eccentric manner recently de- 
scribed by a writer in the Zoologist. 

I found that I had to cross a very wonderful little 



1 62 Nine Years in Nipon. 

garden belonging to an old priest. He was much in- 
terested in my rather amateurish botanical collection, and 
showed me many rare plants he had collected. His 
garden was a perfect model of fine culture and rich 
variety, and had cost him the earnest labour of a long 
lifetime. He was anxious to hear of the latest phases of 
the Eastern Question, and weighed the influence of 
European statesmen and sovereigns with a good deal of 
insight. I have the pleasantest memories of the hospitable 
cup of tea and profitable chat I had with this gentle, 
genial old priest. 

My last walk was up along a leafy glen through which 
tore in angry foam over glossy bluish boulders and 
through dripping ferns a mountain torrent called the 
Daiya. Along the mossy footpath were arranged some 
hundreds of stone Buddhas, mostly of heroic size, which 
it is said no man can number. The reason is perhaps 
very simple, — the rank is so irregular, some having fallen, 
others being overgrown with long grass or hid in bamboo 
brake, so that although I along with several others essayed 
to count them we could in no wise agree as to the num- 
ber. The Buddhists in Ceylon believe that the steps to 
Adam's Peak are uncountable, and so it used to be said 
in their neighbourhood that the stones of Stonehenge in 
England can never be correctly enumerated. 

All the oft-told glory and magnificence of Nikko did 
not impress me so strongly as this long row of Amida 
Buddhas, their faces — portraits of old monks I think they 
must surely have been — leprosied over with lichens of 
every tone and colour so as to give one strange impres- 
sions as of frozen grimaces of pain or sardonic laughter 



Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 163 

stereotyped into a changeless calm. One felt, indeed, as 
if the frenzied living world with all its intensity of sweet- 
ness and beauty were but fleeting vanity, and that in 
death alone could the eternal truth of things begin to be 
fitly seen. 



164 Nine Years in Nipon, 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. 

Yedo Bay — Matsuwa's Sacrifice — Rapid Currents — Fair Islands — Atmo s 
pheric Effects — A Tight Fit — Shimonoseki — The Resources of Christian 
Civilization — A Big Indemnity — Grand Sea Scene and Mai de Afer — 
Nagasaki Harbour — Papenberg — Story of the Martyrs — Chinese 
Money Changers — Tortoise-shell Work — Schools and Missions. 

IT was on an evening late in October that the donkey- 
engine on the P. & O. S.S. "Sumatra" ceased its 
continuous braying, and we gHded out of the harbour of 
Yokohama, past the glooming bluff through which a few 
ruddy lights gleamed and twinkled, shining, we wot, on 
familiar faces, threaded our way through grey junks, 
showing their lights as civilized ships ought to do, cleav- 
ing a smooth obsidian sea till we were past the lighthouse. 
At the entrance to the Bay of Yedo white phosphorescent 
wavelets began to gleam, the good steamship to rock, and 
I climbed rather hastily to my humble hammock. 

The morning dawned — without any sun having taken 
the trouble to rise — on an angry heaving sea of monot- 
onously dark indigo, through whose white capped waves 
great bonitos were leaping joyously alongside of us like a 
crowd of schoolboys racing beside a mail coach. Great 
numbers of -those giant mackerels are brought to the 
Tokio market, and bring good prices. The Tokio people 
are even proverbial through the Empire for their absurd 
love of a fish that can hardly be eaten fresh, it decomposes 



Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. 165 

so rapidly. It is therefore sold when alarmingly " high," 
and the market is not very pleasant to pass through in 
hot weather when the supply is a little more plentiful 
than the demand. 

We were soon off the beautiful, but wild and rugged 
Kii coast, which lay north-east of us. The valleys are 
said to be well populated, but no signs of habitation could 
be discerned. The mountains were thickly wooded, and 
not much cultivated land was to be seen. The people 
indeed, are chiefly engaged in wood cutting and fishing. 
Not to speak of the Great Sea-serpent which once turned 
up somewhere thereabouts, and was well authenticated — 
for such an animal — whales are hunted for in a peculiar 
way. Many boats go out in pairs with long loose nets, 
which are woven around the monster one by one, some- 
what in the manner in which I have seen a spider fasten 
an unwelcome wasp, till he is fairly worn out with worry 
and ineffective attempts to free himself from his tormentors, 
and becomes an easy prey to their weapons. 

There is a fine revolving light of the second order at 
Cape Kashi, which is visible for eighteen miles ; and at 
Shiwomi Cape there is a fixed one of the first order, while 
an inferior one is situated on an island, so that a difficult 
passage has now, I believe, been rendered quite practicable 
at all hours. 

The route from this point to Nagasaki is one diversified 
panorama of striking beauty, although I cannot say that 
it is altogether unequalled, except, perhaps, in mere 
extent. Hiogo is the western terminus of the projected 
grand trunk line which is to connect that port with Tokio 
and the north, and with its modern foreign suburb Kobe, 



1 66 Nine Years in Nipon. 

it forms one of the most important seaports in Japan. 
The raihvay has already been completed for a good many 
miles past Kioto, the old inland capital, and passes 
through what in times not very old was the greatest 
commercial city in Japan — Osaka, where there are still 
fully a quarter of a million of busy people residing. Its 
many named river might easily be deepened, I think, and 
then poor old Osaka would quickly renew its once 
vigorous youth. 

Beside Hiogo there is another river overhung with tall 
pines, which had its course artificially diverted many cen- 
turies ago. On its now neatly laid out banks a bloody 
battle, disastrous to the Mikado's army, was fought in 
1336 by the first Shogun of the Ashikaga line. There is, 
as mentioned by Messrs. Satow and Hawes, an artificial 
island called Tsuki-jima. As the narrative related by 
them in connection with the island is one of the most re- 
markable occurrences — supposing the original story to be 
genuine — in the religious history of Japan, I transcribe it 
closely. 

STORY OF MATSUWO'S SACRIFK:E. 

" Tradition says that this island was twice constructed, 
and after each occasion demolished by the waves. A 
great scholar named Abe no Yasu-uji, being asked to 
find out the cause of this repeated catastrophe, discovered 
by his art of divination that the sea in this part 
was the abode of a dragon, who could not endure that it 
should become dry land, and to appease him it would be 
necessary to bury in the sea thirty ' human pillars,' upon 
which should be placed stones engraved with Sanskrit 
texts. This being done, the construction of the island 



Nagasaki a7id the Inland Sea. 167 

would be allowed to proceed without further opposition. 
Acting on their advice, Kiyomori beset the high road by 
Ikuta wood with a guard of soldiers, and made up the 
required number of victims from travellers who passed 
that way ; but the people of the neighbourhood protested 
so strongly, that all belonging to Hiogo were let go. 
This gave rise to the saying, ' Spare him, he is a Hiogo 
man.' The number was afterwards made up again, but 
the friends and relations of the intended victims made 
such an uproar that the ceremony of sinking them in the 
sea was postponed by Kiyomori, and in the meantime a 
youth named Matsuwo Kotei came and begged that the 
thirty might be released, saying that he would allow him- 
self to be buried in their stead, and that the dragon would 
doubtless appreciate his intention, and accept his life fcr 
theirs. This magnanimous offer was accepted, and Mat- 
suwo being accordingly placed in a stone coffin, was sunk 
in the sea, to the entire satisfaction of the dragon, and 
the island was completed without any further difficulty." 



I think there can be little doubt that the Kiyomori 
mentioned in the narrative is a historical personage. A 
monument may be seen which is said to have been erected 
in A.D. 1286 — a century after his death. Possibly, however, 
the existing memorial simply represents the one just 
mentioned. 

It must be remembered that Buddhism was then widely 
professed all over Japan. Long before this the idea of 
substituting images for living persons had been adopted, 
and the act here recorded is very like a sudden reversion 
to an old and forgotten rite. The history of Taouism in 
Japan has not yet been written, but it is not unlikely, 
from the mention of the use of Sanskrit mantras or charms, 



1 68 Nme Years in Nipon. 

that the Taouists, who are little more than heretics from 
Buddhism, had some influence there. The adherents of 
at least one of the chief Buddhist sects in Japan are little 
else than Taouists, and they are now very poor sort of 
creatures indeed. The number thirty is somewhat remark- 
able, and is not very common in Buddhist symbolism. 

I do not feel that it would be possible for me to do 
justice to the romantic, changeful beauty of the Inland 
Sea, of which Japan is justly proud, and so no pictorial 
description need be looked for here. Few of the islands 
we passed near enough to see distinctly were of marked 
geological individuality, or such as to demand special notice. 
In another respect also the view was perhaps to some 
little extent disappointing, — I refer to the general lack, 
here as in Japan generally, of soft mellow effects of golden 
light and warm, half luminous shadows which give so 
much subtle sweetness to our home landscapes. I missed 
also those shifting shadows of well-defined clouds in a 
clear sky which are almost constantly to be seen amongst 
the western isles of Scotland, unless when the hills are 
half-veiled in a tenuous mist. Indeed I must frankly say 
that I have rarely been impressed with the beauty of 
atmospheric effects in Japan, and in nine years' attentive 
observation can only recall five or six such sunsets as are 
to be witnessed very frequently in places so widely re- 
moved as Ceylon and the West of Scotland. The sunrises 
may perhaps be what Japan lays herself out for specially, 
but for reasons which I need not enter upon, this depart- 
ment of nature has received less of my attention. 

I cannot name any special reason why the scenery is 
felt to be so charming as it is. Truly — 



Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. 169 

. . " The earth and ocean seem 
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream." 

The width of the channel varies very greatly, and the isles 
and islets are very irregularly distributed, so that as the 
panorama unrolls itself there is a constant sense of change 
and movement, of wild expectation and pleasing surprise. 
There is one feeling perhaps always lurking obscurely in 
a practical mind, too, and weaving threads of interest 
around each fairy scene, — the sea is studded with trading 
junks ; the larger of those fertile bosky islands are well 
inhabited by a rising race of most industrious, orderly, 
and friendly people ; and one cannot but believe that in 
a short time this great navigable inland channel with 
which Providence has so richly blessed Japan will yet be 
fretted by the fleets of all nations, bent on the peaceful 
errands of commerce to great towns and harbours which 
as yet exist only in day-dreams. 

I do not know anything of the natural history of the 
Inland Sea, which would, I am sure, prove very interesting. 
Mr. Grififis mentions that a " mollusc " is actively engaged 
in those waters, perforating timber and doing much 
destruction. I have already referred to the similar action 
of a Ligia in Tokio Bay, but there are many marine borers 
of a destructive kind in Japanese waters, and they would 
seem to demand the careful attention of the Government. 

The afternoon was advancing into evening, when our 
large steamer, steered with great caution, passed through 
the rushing current of a narrow crooked passage. We 
were before the old batteries of Shimonoseki — the Gibraltar 
of the Japanese Mediterranean. 

Here, in 1864, the grim "resources of a civilization" 



I/O Nine Years in Nipon. 

calling itself Christian were brought to bear on the 
recalcitrant prince of Nagato, whose forts and ships had 
fired on the U.S. Pembroke and other vessels. Finally, 
one hundred British guns and another hundred or so 
of French, Dutch, and American drew much blood 
from the Japanese, and an indemnity of three million 
dollars, which sum was divided equally amongst the 
avenging nations. America, after some discussion, 
has restored her share to Japan, without interest and 
minus the amount claimed for actual trifling losses 
sustained. It is to be hoped, therefore, that Britain 
which is not yet on the eve of bankruptcy, may find it a 
pleasure to restore the sum, which was really never ex- 
pected to be paid. The policy pursued, as a piece of 
sharp diplomatic practice in an urgent crisis, may not 
have been without a certain influence from which good 
came ; but we have nothing to lose and everything to 
gain now by soothing an old sore which has ever since 
remained open, and which irritates to a degree few out of 
Japan can quite appreciate. 

We were soon out in an open rough sea, from the 
seething current-tossed waters of which stood out boldly 
in the pale light of a youngish moon, strange fantastically 
carved columns of black rock. 

Next morning we awoke at the sound of a sudden 
salute, to find ourselves dropping anchor in the lovely 
lake-like harbour of Nagasaki, close beside a large well- 
manned British ironclad. After selecting from a fleet of 
small boats one which seemed tolerably safe and sweet, 
we made for the landing-place, and found the usual rows 
of radiant jinrikisha-men making ducks — decoy ducks ? — 



Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. 171 

to secure our favour ; scaly crowds of fish hawkers, jolly 




Fish Hawkers. (Japanese Sketch.) 

tars of every flag, a Loochooan or two, crowds of China- 
men, and a few phlegmatic Dutchmen. There is now a 
splendid graving dock in the harbour, and, on the whole, 
Nagasaki did not look to me as if it were quite on its 
last legs. 

As we steamed out in the evening, we passed on the 
right a steep wooded cliff, on the brink of which once 
stood crowds of Roman Catholic Christians — pallid with 
torture perhaps, but not from fear — waiting to be hurled 
down the face of the cliff and perish in the deep, unless 
they should trample on the cross and disown their faith. 

It is not supposed by the heathen that any significant 
number of them shrank from this awful test of their faith, 
and so it came to pass that the infallible historians could 
for once record that persecution had blotted out a Church. 
It was not really so, however, and thousands claim Christian 
and blood descent from those who then gained the 
martyr's crown. The Dutch Calvinists, who seem always 



172 Nine Years in Nipon. 

to have had some of that delightfully Christian spirit the 
Boers manifest in Africa, humorously called the ever 
sacred spot where so many Christians meekly met a 
pitiful death — the Papenberg ; and so the name lives, 
though not the sneer. 



Ten Days on the Tokaido, 173 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Ten Days 07i the Tokaido. 

■On the Osaka Railway — Cold Water Cure for Sin — A Kaleidoscopic Cook — 

Hints for Travellers — Glimpses of Kioto, the Old Capital — Buddhists 

and their Bells — A Lantern-lit City and a Star-lit Hedge — Salamanders 

■ and Singing Frogs — Snake-baskets and River-banks — On the Tokaido — 

Hakone Pass — A Volcanic Cup and some of its Contents. 

AMONGST the many overlapping geographical 
divisions that distract travellers and students, 
none perhaps has been so permanently popular as that 
which is connected with the great old highways of Japan. 
Suppose we were daily accustomed to divide England 
into great districts or circuits according to our railway 
systems, as the Midland, the Great Northern, and so forth, 
we should then have some idea of this peculiar arrange- 
ment. The Tokaido, or " East-sea-way," is the road 
inclusive of the bordering country which runs close by the 
southern shore of the Hondo or Chief island from Kioto, 
the old capital, eastward on to Tokio. 

Along with an American professor I had arrived in 
Kobe by steamer through a rather tempestuous sea, sick, 
dirty, and miserable, amid a pallid crowd of woe-begone 
Japanese fellow-passengers, if possible more sick and 
miserable even than ourselves. The rain was pouring in 
torrents and a piercing wind chilled our very marrows as 
we landed. After a good hot bath, a sound sleep, and a 
very hearty mid-day breakfast, we walked round the 



174 Nine Years in Nipon. 

settlement, which had been thoroughly well washed down 
by the rain. Kobe is a modern " foreign "-built town, 
with regular, well laid out streets. The houses are usually 
tinted in two colours, according to the Italian style, and 
have a very pleasing appearance. The settlement seemed 
to be raised on a succession of broad scrub-clad gravel 
terraces, and is closed in by a high range of hills crowned 
with patches of dark wood and scraggy brushwood. Close 
by is Hiogo, a characteristic old native town, where there 
is now the spacious terminus of a well-laid railway which 
runs to Osaka and Kioto, and will yet, it is hoped, soon 
reach Tokio. A waterfall of no great volume — a " one- 
horse fall " my friend termed it — is the chief attraction to 
visitors about Kobe. The dark vegetation surrounding it 
was, however, very romantic and beautiful, and one or two 
pious persons were shiveringly doing the " cold water 
drip " penance — which I suppose is a religious substitute 
for our honest British B. and S. — at a considerable rill 
beside the main volume of water. 

After drifting about the settlement in rather an aimless 
manner we took tickets for Osaka, which was then the 
temporary terminus of the railway. 

The railway crosses at a high level a spur of the range 
that encloses Kobe and then darts down towards Osaka, 
straight as an arrow, by a series of alternating slopes and 
levels which had rather a striking appearance from the 
top of the incline. The traffic even then was very good, 
and seemed to bid fair for the ultimate success of railways 
in Japan. It is now, I understand, almost as great as that 
on any line of similar capacity in our own country, and 
the returns are good. 



Ten Days on the Tokaido. 



175 



Osaka was formerly the chief commercial town of 
Japan, and is still a city of not less than 400,000 inhabi- 
tants, boasting of a very old moated castle of much 
historical interest, a modern mint, an arsenal, and a con- 
siderable garrison. Few foreigners live there, and those 
are chiefly either missionaries or government employes. 
It is situated not far from the sea, on the banks of a 
shallow river which must some day soon be deepened, and 



SEAofJAPAN 




the city is intersected by numerous canals meeting at right 
angles. The houses which overhang the canals have a 



176 Nine Years in Nipon. 

very characteristic Japanese look, and reminded me 
strongly of some quaint old illustrations in works of 
romance. 

From certain points a little above the city we could see 
away out at sea white ^^specks of sail glinting in the sun- 
light, which recalled a famous voyage made ages ago by 
a citizen of credit and renown — a sort of poetical Pepys 
of the period, for an interesting account of whose old- 
world diary we are indebted to Mr. Aston, our scholarly 
Consul-General in Corea. 

After roaming about the endless half-dead and alive 
streets we found a French hotel and had dinner, which 
combined most of the worst features of Japanese and 
French systems of cookery, and a splendid cup of coffee 
which almost atoned for all that had gone before. We 
had brought with us a Japanese servant who amused us 
with somewhat preposterous stories of his own doughty 
doings in the great wars which preceded the Restoration, 
and who described his marching as one of the guards of a 
train of bullock-carts laden with solid gold, which he is 
quite sure has been cleverly secreted somewhere by the 
officials of the Shogun's time, to be unearthed when some 
great crisis arrives ! 

This now peaceful warrior was sent to forage for 
jinrikishas, and soon arrived, flushed and argumentative, 
with a grand array of those useful vehicles and the 
drawers thereof. It seemed as if such terms of payment 
as the law gravely lays down had never once been pro- 
posed in Japan before, but we drove a bargain at last after 
much forensic display ; for Mr. Mankichi was an accom- 
plished amateur lawyer as well as an invincible warrior ; 



Ten Days on the Tokaido. 17 7 

indeed, his character was quite kaleidoscope, for we soon 
became involved with him in almost fierce discussions on 
astronomy and the ultimate causation of fossils. After 
lots had been cast by means of straws, a bargain was 
struck at the despised rate, and the crowd of disappointed 
candidates retired, grinning good-naturedly in Japanese 
fashion at their bad luck. 

It is best in travelling in hot weather over dusty roads to 
avoid white linen clothes— some prefer Chinese blue flannel, 
others duck, with military collar to the coat. The popular 
white suit becomes hopelessly grimy and degraded-looking 
after a few miles. I find a most useful thing is a small 
snap-bag with provender, and a kori—3. kind of basket 
woven of thin flexible bamboo laths— in two portions, the 
one overlapping the other like a grass or cane tobacco 
pouch, and so varying in capacity with the need of it. 
Others are made of willow. They can be rolled up in the 
tough, untearable, oil-paper of the country, and then 
strapped behind the hood of the jinrikisha. A satchel is 
useful to have across one's shoulder to contain geological 
or botanical specimens when on foot. 

Two good runners will carry yourself and light luggage 
along, without undue fatigue, at the rate of about seven 
miles an hour, and will run with one or two short intervals 
for rest and refreshment for seven or eight hours in one 
day, or even longer in an emergency. For a short 
distance, in mild weather and on an exceptionably good 
road, very rapid work is sometimes done. I think, how- 
ever, that tourists have often shown a tendency to 
exaggerate the staying powers of the coolies. When 
pitted against professional runners, Japanese jinrikisha- 



17^ Nine Years in Nipon. 

men have been badly beaten. I have myself drawn a 
loaded jinrikisha for a short distance, and the labour is 
less than one might suppose, when some momentum has 
been acquired. 

The men do not suffer severely from their occupation, as 
far as a medical experience of nine years, chiefly in 
dispensary practice, enables me to judge. On the 
contrary, I think they are on the whole a very healthy 
class, and the broken-down members of it are chiefly those 
who have already failed in other spheres from intemper- 
ance or bad health, or idleness. Those men slink into 
by-lanes for hire, and carry priests, sick folk, and old 
women, bent on doing shopping, at lower than the usual 
fares. An active jinrikishaman can earn a fair wage, and 
has a reasonable prospect of living quite as long as is good 
for him. I know of no special diseases to which they are 
subject, but have seen some bad cases of rheumatism, 
bronchitis, and so forth, from exposure in bad weather, 
just as in the case of farming and other out-of-door work. 
I have also seen a few cases of varicose veins in the legs, 
but that affection is more frequent amongst English shop- 
keepers who stand most of the day, than amongst the car- 
drawers of Japan. 

Soon we passed the old castle with its ivied cyclopean 
walls on our right, running along a low embankment 
through wide marshy tracts, interspersed with rice fields 
and closed in with beautiful blue-tinted mountains, lying 
low on the horizon below banks of gloriously-moulded 
silvery clouds. 

When we reached a hamlet in the suburbs called 
Moriguchicho, the coolies became insubordinate, and an 



Ten Days on the Tokaido. I'JC) 

amount of unintelligible but eloquent slang was expended, 
that promised to leave little breath for the long pull before 
them. A formal appeal to the wizened, tremulous old 
"elder" of the community, resulted in a bargain being 
formally drawn out and solemnly sealed — signing is not a 
Japanese custom. The project was one which I have 
since found to be very common ; the city coolies hoped to 
sell out their contract to the villagers at a profit to them- 
selves. It is rather disagreeable to have the consciousness 
of being sold in this way. Many are the reasons alleged 
for the breach of contract, such as a broken spring, 
mysterious spasms, or a thorn in the foot, and no one need 
wonder that the trick very often succeeds. After we got 
on our way again the sky was yellowing — it rather rarely 
reddens here — for sunset, and soon we sunk into a gloomy 
valley which night had already reached. Here we had to 
alight and walk through marshes, rustling with buUrushes, 
to an invisible ferry-boat which many farmers, hawkers, 
and others were very patiently waiting for. Dark shadows 
were now falling over the reedy flats, and the plaintive 
cries of various water-fowls quivered through the silent 
fen. The sun was now only indicated by an oval slant- 
ing glow like that of the zodiacal light, and one by one 
pale stars tremulously peeped forth from a marvellously 
clear sky. The conversation quite naturally turned on 
astronomy, and it was curious to hear how well-informed 
were some of the intending passengers regarding a system 
supposed to have been introduced into China 2000 years 
before the Star of Bethlehem struck chill terror into 
Herod's heart. 

After crossing the ferry, to the rather rare accompani- 



i8o Nine Years in Nipon. 

ment of a genuine Japanese song, we had a long ride 
through dim Ht villages, — inhabited by rough and danger- 
ous people as we were warned in one case, — dark hedge- 
rows and dreary rice fields, and at length when we were 
fairly nodding with sleep, we passed through what seemed 
interminable miles of long dark streets, at every corner of 
which I felt that a bloody tragedy might fitly have been 
enacted. At last we stopped at a cheery well lit hotel, 
romantically Japanese in structure, but with much Euro- 
pean comfort about it, and there we found right good wel- 
come in the native fashion, and the best of good cheer. 

On the morning we climbed a picturesque slope behind 
the hotel, through a winding woodland path, smelling of 
fresh pine resin, and visited the red painted Buddhist 
shrines and temples that cluster beneath the umbrageous 
foliage of many lofty and venerable trees, I made many 
notes on details, which, however, I am sure would not be 
very interesting to readers. The temple servants were just 
swinging the heavy wooden ram which does duty in Japa- 
nese temples for a bell-clapper, striking the bell power- 
fully from the outside, but with great softness of effect. 
We were really startled when the first sonorous boom of 
a bronze giant quivered through the leafy gloom in most 
musical waves, went echoing in ever mellowing tones 
down through the hot city, and trembled in fainter and 
fainter vibrations far away across the valley to the bosky 
shrine-crowned heights beyond. 

Bells in Japanese temple grounds are often made of the 
molten contributions in hard cash of pious believers, and 
the custom seems to me a very suggestive and pretty one. 
It is from this cause, the priests tell us, that the tone of 



Ten Days on the Tokaido. i8i 

their bells is so notably sweet, for gold and silver enter in 
considerable proportion into the composition of some of 
their finest bells — a fact which has been confirmed by 
chemical analysis in one case at least. 

With a fine combination of American push and Scottish 
prudence we had applied for permission to visit the Impe- 
rial Palace, which was not then usually so open to visitors 
as it afterwards became. We were therefore greatly grati- 
fied to have a visit in an hour or so afterwards from a most 
courteous official of the municipality, who favoured us 
with a special permit from the Chiji — a sort of perpetual 
Lord Mayor — of this grand old royal city of Kioto, 
I have little to say of the palace. It was spacious, 
costly, and severely plain in many respects ; but there 
was little in it to interest any one but a professional 
tourist. 

We spent the evening looking over the latest 
English and American papers we could find — none of 
them very fresh ; and when the shades of evening fell 
rather suddenly over the valley in which the old city lies 
embosomed so beautifully, we were surprised to see the 
river's bed — which was almost dry — suddenly glowing 
into one wide ruddy blaze of light ; while one long street, 
lined on either side with coloured paper lanterns, stretched 
away in two straight beams, till the lines converged into 
a vanishing point in the hazy distance. It was the annual 
festival of the river-opening in which Kioto, fortunately 
for us, is always to be seen in its best and most character- 
istic aspects. The contrast between the lemon-yellow 
sky, still luminous with the last rays of a dying sun ; the 
dark wooded sides of the valley, and the ruddy glow of 



1 82 Nine Years in Nipon. 

torches and coloured lamps was as fascinating as any 
fairy dream of a young school-girl after her first panto- 
mime. We hurried over dinner and made for the town, 
so as to see what the festive citizens were about. The 
gait, dress, and manners of the Kioto ladies are much 
more pleasing and refined than those of Tokio, and their 
hair is always prettily dressed. There is generally 
throughout the community more old-fashioned punctilious 
etiquette, and the language is spoken with greater 
fastidiousness both in respect to clear enunciation and the 
choice of words and phrases. The atrocious nasal sound 
of ^ which prevails in Tokio is quite unheard in Kioto. 

Kioto is noted for its fans, so I invested in a few choice 
artistic specimens for friends. One of them contained a 
well-drawn fanciful group of the great classic authors of 
Japan, male and female. Another very pleasing one was 
composed of the different kinds of maple leaf known in 
the country, and contained great variety of form and 
colour gracefully contrasted. In lecturing on Darwinism, 
I pointed out the fact that a Japanese artist had thus found 
beauty in all the so-called accidental varieties, and so ob- 
jective beauty might be considered as a phase of utility in 
viewing the universe teleologically, as it was still possible 
to do. This and similar illustrations, I found, had been 
very effective, as addressed to a highly educated Japanese 
audience. 

We spent some time amidst the giddy throng in the 
dry river's bed, listening to open air story-tellers, laughing 
at mummers, indulging in sips of tea and peppermint 
toffy, and chatting in a free and easy way to the world 
and his very sedate wife. 



Ten Days on the Tokaido. 183 

As we retraced our steps, warm and weary, the hedges 
of mingled cryptomeria, privet, and fern, were mysteriously 
lit up here and there by the pale lambent green light 
of glow-worms, while now and again a star-like firefly 
floated silently amongst the foliage. I have seen 
much larger and brighter ones when travelling through 
Bengal, and I never saw in Japan, what is often a very 
striking and mysterious phenomenon nearer the tropics, 
the rhythmic simultaneous twinkling of all the members of 
a single group of fireflies. 

We were just in time to see, by the dim candle light of 
many paper lanterns, in the court of an adjoining house a 
grand display of old-fashioned court dancing, or rather 
posturing in operatic costume, varying with the nature of 
the piece to be performed. It was rather a dull perform- 
ance, and far too artificial to interest even a Japanese. 

Before leaving Kioto we paid a visit to a porcelain estab- 
lishment, and were pleased to see artists painting extempore 
designs of great beauty with a firm, free hand. In a tank 
close by I noticed a great eft-like brute, which lay quite 
still. It was a splendid specimen of the gigantic Sala- 
mander of Japan. I obtained a dead specimen of a kind 

of tree frog called Kajika, a con- 
traction for kawa-shika (river- 
deer), which is found at Arashi 
Yama, about four or five miles 
from Kioto — a district famous for 
its fine cherry-trees. Those frogs 
e- . zr ,n /■ A7 . ) are prized greatly for their fine 

Clinging Prog [JJrawnjrojn JSIature). -C^ o • 

musical voice, which resembles the sweet chirp of some 
tree crickets, and like them they are kept in cages. They 




184 Nine Years in Nipon. 

are fed on flies when in confinement Similar frogs occur 
in one or two other parts of Japan, and I had once the 
good fortune to hear one in Tokio, chirping in a very 
sweet and mellow tone, which I am not musician enough 
to describe. We visited all that was to be seen in Kioto, 
which left a very charming impression on me, so little does 
it seem to differ from the Kioto one reads of in old world 
tales of the feudal times that have fled for ever. 

We walked on a rough newly-laid road to Otsu, got 
caught in a deluge of rain, and in the circumstances had a 
rather dispiriting view of the great fresh water lake of Ja- 
pan, called Biwa, from its supposed resemblance in shape 
to the Japanese lute of that name. We spent our first 
night on the way to Tokio at Ishibe. The people were very 
attentive, and soon after we retired for the night closed 
our shutters, depriving us of every breath of air. We had 
made a successful appeal against this arrangement when 
an old night watchman appeared on the scene, and 
roused the dormant echoes and inmates by a pair of loud 
clappers, which he worked with painfully frequent itera- 
tion. We ventured to expostulate, but were at once 
offered our choice of either sharp horn — suffocation or 
sleeplessness. Knowing the vigilance of the watchman 
would soon succumb we preferred to have some air. Just 
as I had expected, the worthy old guardian of our safety 
soon quietly dropped off to sleep, but rose once or twice 
suddenly ere cock-crow and made up for long silence by 
an unusually vehement clattering of his sticks. It is so 
always in Japan — the silent watchman is believed to be 
asleep. He must attest his vigilance by audible evidence 
of it. 



Ten Days on the Tokaido. 185 

We were soon passing curious raised river beds, which 
have been formed like those on the great plains of Lom- 
bardy, and sometimes like them break their bonds and 
rush upon the plain below. 

We spent a quiet restful Sunda}^ at Sono. Some 
villagers brought specimens of quartz with pyrites which 
they suspected might be gold. My friend, who had had 
some experience at the Californian diggings, was struck 
with the resemblance to auriferous rocks which some of 
those specimens bore. I went to the temple and found 
an old farmer enjoying a " crack " with the rector. No 
notice whatever was taken of my presence, but when I 
asked some questions as to the temple, civil answers were 
returned and the conversation opened up pleasantly. 

Goyu was our next stopping place, where we had to 
ourselves a clean pretty little room, opening on a charming 
artificial garden, with a river bridge in the distance and a 
mountainous background of romantic loveliness. 

After that we spent a night in a large empty house 
in Shiraska, whose custom seemed to be leaving it, 
judging from the oppressive civility we received. 
There were several " ironwood " trees in the garden, and 
nothing else. The mats were all edged with red cloth, 
the reason for which I did not understand, and I do not 
remember of seeing it elsewhere in Japan. 

At Suta Gawa we got into a junk, and others joined 
us, so that we had a large company. The sails flapped 
as soon as we started, and then a dead calm with a sultry 
sky set in. I cannot recall another so dreary episode in 
my life as this voyage turned out to be. We were 
soon afflicted with violent cramps, which relieved the 

M 



1 86 Nine Years in Nipon. 

monoton}' a little, but the natives even got irritable with 
the heat and sense of helpless stagnation, and no one 
could be induced to try an oar, lest a sufficient breeze 
should afterwards arise, and there would then have 
been so much dead loss of energy — don't you see? 
In one vast shallow creek which we poled through there 
were great shoals of tiny fish about the size of sprats, which 
rose clear out of the water like flying fish. I could not 
find what their nature was, and certainly I have never 
seen large flying fish in Japanese waters. 

The banks of the tributary rivers were carefully lined 
with great " snake-baskets," which are made of tough split 
bamboos woven in an open net-work of wide meshes. 
They are filled with large stones from the river bed, and 
seem like enormous sausages as thick as the body of a 
man and from twenty to twenty-five feet long. They are 
embedded in rows, silt soon accumulating about them, 
and if not carried away vegetation springs up and still 
further guards the banks. 

The road is lined most of the way with venerable pine 
trees, and the humble beggar in a Japanese novel always 
looks to end his days, nameless and forgotten, under the 
shadow of one of those great trees. The telegraph is seen 
nearly all the way. In some places great spiders hang 
tough threads over the path, which crack across your 
smarting face with a twang almost like that made by a 
piece of pack-thread. 

Every few miles or so you find a tea-house, and in busy 
places there may be several in one mile's distance, where 
you may have a cup of tea and a quiet smoke. 

As we dashed through Shidzuoka with its old ivied castle,. 



Ten Days on the Tokaido. 



187 



where the ex-Shogun now lives in dignified retirement far 
from the din of the world, we passed some great hulking 
over-fed giants in peculiar attire — one after another in 
rapid procession, as if one were in a nightmare. They 




A Cup of Tea and a Quiet Svioke. (Japanese Sketch.) 



were professional wrestlers who were to perform in town 
that evening. Soon afterwards we came to a turn of the 
road where through a veil of mist we looked sheer down into 
a boiling, foaming sea, and by-and-by a great plain opened 
out to view, from which arose in ever steeper sweep the great 
wood-embroidered flanks of Fuji, stupendous and seeming 
to merge into heaven itself, as I have seen no other 
mountain do, and not even Fuji from any other single 
point of view. 

We had to ascend Hakone Pass in cages. The price 
agreed upon was declared to be too little, and our gentle 
bearers began a series of mild persecutions, bumping our 
poor weary bones and giving us constant cc asion to 



1 88 Nine Years in Nipon, 

change our position. I began to see that this little game 
was proving a very great amusement to our demure 
oriental friends, so I passed the word to my companion to 
take revenge, and a very sweet and prompt one we did 
take. By raising ourselves well up and rhythmically bring- 
ing our whole weight down smartly whenever a bump was 
planned for us, the poor shoulders of our bearers soon 
came to ache so badly that they " smelt a rat " ; a loud 
but disconcerted laugh was the result, and then we all got 
on amicably like good Christians for the rest of the way. 

We found the heights of Hakone delightfully cool after 
the sweltering heat of the plains, and then there are hardly 
any mosquitos there. The hills are softly rounded, and when 
not thickly wooded are covered with wormwood scrub. 
Goats seem to thrive on the coarse pasturage, but have not 
yet been bred to any extent. We crossed the ridge at a 
height of about 3000 feet. The little town is spread 
along the margin of a deep and picturesque lake which 
occupies the cup of an old volcano, and in which moun- 
tains capped with cottony clouds were reflected as in a 
mirror. The depth varies about two feet according to the 
rainfall. 

We had some fishing from a little shallop, but 
were not very successful. I was told that the following 
varieties of fish were found in the lake : — Masu (which is 
the best), akahara (red-belly), fttna^ namadzu, koi (see 
design on the cover of this work), eels, and a kind of 
minnow. Newts and a lizard with a metallic tail of great 
brilliancy abound. There are toads with reddish brown 
spots, adders, and at least two varieties of snake, the 
ao-daisJio and Yaina kagashi or Yania gacJii^ as I have 



Ten Days on the Tokaido. 189 

also heard it called. The latter bites angrily, but 
not fatally. Great water spiders were swimming about, 
and I saw many pale cream-coloured butterflies tinted 
with red on the hinder half of their wings. They 
were hovering over a sweet-smelling plant like our own 
honeysuckle, but with stiff, tiny, star-like flowers. Midges 
were gyrating in swarms as evening closed in, but I saw 
no swallows there, though they were numerous on both 
sides of the Hakone Pass below. 

I was soon striding down the long stone causeway 
which leads to the plains, outstripping a very determined 
little policeman in plain clothes who gave in rather un- 
willingly to my greater length of limb, and I arrived at 
Odawara at night. On asking for a glass of water, I got 
one containing, inter alia, a very beautiful large specimen 
of earthworm vulgaris, which almost spoiled my appetite 
for a jolly dinner I was looking forward to next day in 
the Royal Hotel, Yokohama, after ten days' Japanese fare 
and a tough dyspepsia. 



190 Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. 

Simplicity of Japanese Bouquets — Artless Art — A Floral Calendar — Flower 
and Tree Markets — Fruitless Sprays of Blossom — Place of Honour and 
its Decoration — Allusive Obscurity — "Heaven, Earth and Man "— 
Symbolism in Flowers — Art Training of the People. 

WHEN you enter the guest-room in a Japanese 
mansion of the better class you are at once 
impressed with a subtle elegance and propriety not easily 
explained. The room may contain but a very few 
simple articles of adornment, and the chief or only one 
may be a plant or a bouquet. By-and-by it dawns upon 
the observant foreigner that the very same elements dis- 
posed by clumsy western hands in but a slightly different 
way would deprive the room of half its charm. The 
pleasing effect is surely then due to art and not to accident, 
and if so, some rational exposition of the principles which 
underlie it may yet be hoped for. 

I was once greatly struck with the unique beauty and 
effectiveness of a large and stainlessly white blossom of 
peony, accompanied by a single pearl-toned bud, which 
was thus made almost to furnish the drawing-room of one 
of the highest government officials. A Japanese friend, 
famed for plant-lore, who was with me, pointed out what 
art had done in this case to single out and firmly accent 
the best of nature's work for attention and admiration. 
Now, if it be true as President M'Cosh has said, that there 



Japanese Philosophy of Flozvers. 1 9 1 

is enough even in a single "pine cone to reward the study 
for hours together of the very highest intellect," it may 
not be uninteresting to observe the manner in which an 
aesthetically gifted people have been wont to prepare the 
beauties of the floral world as objects of cultured contem- 
plation. For all their apparent artlessness is itself an art 
bound by technical rules and based on carefully attained 

principles. 

In one— which, by the way, happens to be a serino7i— 
of Mitford's charmingly told "Tales of Old Japan" 
there is an amusing account of the efforts made long ago 
by an accomplished girl, the daughter of a self-made man, 
to entertain a pious preacher of great celebrity. Amongst 
other pretty doings she arranged bouquets of flowers and 
wove garlands round pine torches. Now this old-fashioned 
accomplishment is by no means extinct, and there are still 
in Tokio many "professors" who gain a livelihood by 
revealing its mysteries for a very small fee indeed. 

A great deal is now even popularly known in western 
countries of the Japanese love of plants and flowers. The 
whole calendar is pervaded by festive seasons named after 
particular flowers or plants, and the newspapers, for days 
before a festival of this kind, record the local progress 
towards perfection of the season's floral attraction ; picnic 
parties are arranged, and the staid official or practical 
merchant, with family all arrayed in their holiday best, 
move to the scene with a sense of as solemn obligation as 
westerns feel on the occasion of a religious service. On 
certain nights, too, which in the stifling summer time 
happily come very often, certain streets may be seen from 
afar to gleam with the radiance of innumerable torches. 



192 Nine Years in Nipon. 

and, shades of Macbeth ! whole uprooted forests often in 
full bloom, are seen moving towards the open flower- 
market. The pot plants and cut flowers are always very 
attractive, and on those sultry or muggy nights during the 
midsummer heat, one never tires of viewing the fresh and 
dewy leaves and half-opened buds which make the dusty 
thoroughfare into a cool forest retreat. The streets in 
spring, summer and autumn teem with the trim and taste- 
ful stalls of peripatetic flower-sellers. Indeed, they are 
not at all unknown in winter even, for then the camellias, 
holly, early plum blossom and several others are in 
season. Such wares are in constant request even in the 
very poorest localities ; and flowers are largely used for 
religious offerings by the Buddhists — a custom which 
seems to have existed from the very time of Shakya 
Muni himself To those who seek a philosophic explana- 
tion of all customs in soil and climate, it may here be 
mentioned as of some interest that flowering plants seem 
to blossom much more luxuriantly in Japan than in the 
west ; perhaps the decomposed lava soil may be a main 
factor in the result, as flowers growing on the slopes of 
volcanoes are proverbially notable for their bright colour. 
The fact, at all events, is strikingly observable in the 
case of certain plants brought from England. Near Tokio 
most kinds of fruit — with only an exception or two 
indeed — reach maturity with difficulty, and the blossom 
has very naturally come to be esteemed for its own sake 
rather than for the problematic benefits it might 
afterwards procure. And so a Japanese instinctively 
tears down great branches from a flowering plum 
or cherry tree to the disgust of the inexperienced 



Japa7iese PhilosopJiy of Flowers. 193 

foreigner who looks for something beyond its evane- 
scent beauty. The art of arranging flowers, then, has 
perhaps somewhat naturally come to occupy a promi- 
nent place in Japanese education. Besides the living in- 
structors already mentioned,cheap works containing lessons 
in the art are widely circulated. In one of them before 
me is a specimen which is simple and pleasing, while it 
approaches much more closely to our ideas of a bouquet 
than others which follow. It belongs to the beginning of 
this century. The elements which compose it are, a 
straight stem of single hollyhock, a bit of begonium, and 
a pink or two. I cannot discern in it any of that sym- 
bolism which, as we shall see, usually dominates the art. 
It is almost the only specimen in my collection of prints 
in which the vase and chief mass of the bouquet lie in one 
perpendicular line. It is well balanced, without undue 
emphasis of symmetry, and the lines present pleasing 
repetition, with some slight variety to break it. The vase 
was probably intended to hz hung against one of those 
straight panel-like ornaments called " pillar hangings," 
which adorn the exposed interior posts of Japanese houses, 
and hence the shape of the bouquet would be appropriate. 
Simple often as are the materials employed — homely as 
the despised grasses of the field, with which Ruskin proudly 
adorns " The Two Paths " as a frontispiece — few Western 
ladies, I fear, could use them to so much advantage. Have 
we not then something yet to learn from the Japanese ? 

Beginning our systematic study of the subject, then, let 
us look first at the place of honour where the floral orna- 
ment is to be set. It is a shallow recess in the chief room, 
having a raised platform, and is called the toko no may 



194 Nine Years in Nipon. 

which we find from old books to have been, literally, the 
bed-place, in old houses of Chinese style. While its 
original dimensions have been greatly contracted in 
modern times, its dignity has been much enhanced, and 
very lofty indeed is the role which it plays in the compli- 
cated etiquette of Japan. The ^taste and culture of the 
householder is brought to a focus at this point, and the 
fertility of invention shown in the adornment of this 
simple recess never fails to interest one in visiting Japanese 
houses. A curious and pleasing feature is the love dis- 
played for inartificial or simply natural forms. The richest 
merchant or highest official may have the bounding posts 
of this recess made by preference of twisted and gnarled 
pine trees splashed with moss and lichen, or of smooth 
and satiny trunks stripped of their bark, or of beams of 
water-logged timber covered with barnacles, and honey- 
combed by the action of sea creatures. The plaster, again, 
may be mixed with many tinted sea-shells, or adorned 
with sea-weeds of many colours, irregularly but artistically 
arranged ; but space will not admit the bare enumeration 
of varieties even of common occurrence. After nine years 
residence, the study of this little region is to me ever full 
of fresh surprises. I have even seen a live cherry or plum 
tree growing outside, coaxed to yield some of its best 
branches to adorn the mansion within. Great ingenuity 
is shown in the selection and construction of a vessel to 
hold the flower. It may be a joint or two of bamboo, 
plain, smoked like a meerschaum pipe, or carved ; a bas- 
ket, real or imitated in pottery of some sort ; a model 
junk, or a vase in bronze, faience, or creamy satsuma. 
There is in most cases a tray or stand of simple and— 



Japanese PJiilosophy of Flowers. 195 

according to Japanese ideas, at least — elegant design. I 
have often seen in the place of honour a bit of oyster-clad 
rock, or the gnarled stump of a dwarf tree, carved in broad 
wavy lines by the larva of a large beetle, or arabesqued 
with rich creamy orange or bricky scarlet lichens, and set 
in deep green many-tinted mosses, from the dank velvet 
of which a spray of tiny fern or feathery plume of some 
rare woodland plant would peep. Then, too, there are 
often most subtle relations of the flower itself to the form 
or colour of its containing vessel ; and here the refined 
instincts of the true artist best display themselves. Often, 
however, as we shall see, the sway of symbolism is too 
rigidly enforced. 

The higher masters of the art usually affect to disclaim 
the use of anything but simple water for the preservation 
of cut flowers. Usually, however, morning glories {con- 
volvulus) are set in tepid water. Some flowers, again, are 
allowed good tea to drink, flavoured with a pinch of 
stimulating spices. The stems of peony and Lespedeza 
are put into hot water. The flowers should be invigorated 
by filling the mouth with water and squirting it over the 
leaves, as one may any day in Japan see the green- 
grocers freshening their wares for fastidious tastes ! All 
defective leaves should be neatly cut off, and the plant 
trimmed as desired. The number of chief branches 
allowed to remain is usually three, but tastes vary as to 
the precise number of blossoms which should be left. 
The number four (shi) is disliked because it sounds the 
same as the word for death. The branches should be 
held over steam till they are sufficiently flexible, after 
which they may easily be bent so as to retain the " set " 



196 Nine Years in Nipon. 

which is given to them. The pupil — who probably in- 
clines unconsciously to illustrate Sam Weller writing his 
famous love-letter — is warned to keep his mouth closed or 
the twigs are sure to be broken in the process. When 
bamboo sprigs are used during winter the backs of the 
leaves should be smeared with sugar and water, but in 
summer salt water should be similarly used instead. The 
root or end of the stem must be carefully and firmly fixed 
in its place. Japanese philosophy — which has chiefly 
hitherto been that of China, from whence it came — 
divides the universe into three grand realms, Heaven, 
Earth, and Man ; and so in the symbolism which gives 
technicalities to the art, the three bunches or groups of 
twigs which are usually made prominent are named thus : 
the central or " true " stem is Heaven, the " flowing " 
or broad one is Earth, and the " stopped " or limited 
one represents Man. Sometimes they are also more 
familiarly called the father, mother, and child. The 
art came from China, but was at first less rigidly 
artificial, and was developed along with the extraor- 
dinary and elaborate etiquette which prevailed in 
Japan in connection with tea - drinking in the good 
old times. There have been many styles of flower- 
arranging, some nine of which, at least, are now all but 
forgotten, and are indiscriminately referred to in common 
talk as the Ko-rin or Old Style. What is called the style 
of Yen-shiu is so named from the region in which it origi- 
nated. It is now the most popular but is usually rather 
too stiff and constrained for refined western tastes, although 
some little latitude is allowed for individual fancy. As to 
liberty, three degrees are supposed to be admissible, and 



Japanese PJiilosophy of Flowers. 197 

these are named after the three modes of writing Chinese 
characters : Shin^ GiyO, So, which may be made partly in- 
teUigible by the analogy of our Roman, Italic and Script 
characters. Flowers placed in front of Buddhist shrines 
are arranged in symbolic flame shape. Kake-mono or 
scroll pictures are often hung beside the flower, and these 
have usually a symbolic or at least indirect relation to the 
season to which the flower belongs. The contained allu- 
sion may be quite veiled to the foreigner, but is generally 
caught up by any Japanese with some degree of culture. 
To take some curious examples of such far-fetched sug- 
gestions. The pot flower is a chrysanthemum. Beside it 
perhaps hangs a picture of a monkey suspended by one 
arm from a tree and grasping at empty nothing with the 
other, and from an allusion in a short stanza appended to 
the scroll we find that he is grasping vainly at the reflected 
moon. But both the moon and its reflection are purposely 
omitted from the picture. Now in Japanese poetry, 
wherein the words and ideas are narrowly restricted, the 
moon — our own harvest moon par excellence — is always 
associated with late autumn, to which season, in short, the 
chrysanthemum in the pot belongs ! 

In another example which accompanies a chrysanthe- 
mum with seven blossoms, a rather boyish looking old 
gentleman, who is the god of plenty, is pointing — not 
directly to Heaven as the bounteous Giver of all good — but 
to the invisible harvest moon of autumn again. 

Again, we have perhaps a bit of plum blossom. The 
companion picture contains pine and bamboo, and these 
three woods, pine, plum and bamboo or " the woody trip- 
let " are always found combined for the New-year's festi- 



198 Nine Years in Nipon. 

vities. The pine is hale and green amidst the cold snows 
of winter, the plum blooms first in the year, or as the 
Japanese poet martially describes it, "leads the 
van with its serried hundreds;" while the bamboo 
with its straight stem and regularly recurrent joints is the 
fitting symbol of an orderly and well regulated life. 
Their relative places may be interchanged, and so we may 
have the pine in the pot and the plum and bamboo on the 
picture, etc. While Buddhists have a liking for the num- 
ber eight, other Japanese, like the Jews, seem to favour 
.the number seven— for flower blossoms. The vase or pot 
usually rests on a stand or tray with four legs, and 
Buddhist symbols are found in their ornamentation, as, 
for example, elephants supporting an outspreading lotus. 
Sometimes boxes are used instead of vases, while in sum- 
mer baskets are frequently substituted. Symbols of 
waves and hares occur together, because the word for 
spindrift in Japanese also means hare, an astronomical 
symbol. 

We come now to ask whether these and other 
similar accomplishments are due to a special art sense or 
instinct peculiar to the people of Japan, or are they the 
result of a long continued training in that particular direc- 
tion ? The one alternative does not necessarily and com- 
pletely exclude the other. Both elements have probably 
existed in some degree, and both are required for any 
full explanation of the result. The latter in recent times 
has certainly had prominence given to it. On the other 
hand, for example, I have seen an old metal mirror, datino- 
on the best native authority from the very dawn almost 
of Japanese history, and on its reverse side is stamped in 



Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. 199 

relief the cherry blossom, speaking to its fair possessor in 
the language of the national poetry, of the fleeting nature 
of human beauty. Numerous examples, indeed, might 
readily be given to show that modern conventional types 
of natural loveliness have had a very persistent existence 
in Japan. On the other hand, as I have already hinted, 
much has been done in very recent times to popularize 
the knowledge of natural forms, and especially the graces 
of plants. An ordinary workman or schoolboy can in a 
bold, free-hand style, draw leaves or flowers that might 
shame many a Western drawing-master. Little books 
which contain masterpieces for imitation, are very cheap, 
and often not unpleasing to the most critical eye. We 
have nothing exactly like them in Western lands, and 
this might suggest a new field of adventure to enterprising 

publishers. 

It must be remembered, however, that these booklets 
were created to satisfy a felt need for them amongst the 
populace. The natural fitness to use them was there, and 
hence the present capacity, I believe, for a further develop- 
ment in art that may soon arrest attention. If the cave 
men were Eskimo, and if the Japanese are descendants of 
them, both of which views have been held singly, 
then we find such a special art sense very far back 
indeed. An impression seems to prevail amongst some 
foreigners that the ability of the Japanese free-hand artist 
is limited to a few well chosen but strictly conventional 
forms. I am quite sure that this is not a fair statement 
of the case, and I now possess many original drawings of 
birds, insects, and other objects, in which unusual but life- 
like postures have been well caught and rendered. In one of 



200 Nine Years in Nip on. 

these cheap little books published just after the railway was 
opened, appears a quite unconventional sketch of a railway 
train rapidly retreating behind an embankment. The in- 
visibleengine with its trailingclouds of lightly whirlingsmoke 
and the retreating buffers give a sense of motion which to 
my mind is singularly lacking even in many of our best 
prints of the same subject. Again, as has been mentioned 
in another chapter, there are in all the streets plastic 
artists often of very original powers, who for half a cent 
mould out of brightly-coloured candy or rice, any flower, 
animal — real or mythological — bit of still life, or active 
enterprise which ingenious urchins can devise. And these 
urchins do manifest genuine wit in devising puzzles for 
the artist's creative skill, while it is quite evident to the 
bystander that the unhesitating worker does not gp by 
rote, but reveals a natural capacity for art which, under 
scientific training, might lead us to expect much greater 
things. 

The national taste coincides very frequently with the 
aesthetic principles scientifically expounded by Mr. Ruskin, 
Grant Allen, and other recent writers. Most intelligently 
in their " education " of trees and flowers do the Japanese 
observe what the former writer calls " the awful, the fate- 
ful lines of branch and foliage," and in a popular Japanese 
newspaper I read a short time ago a paragraph in which 
the ideal education of a city Arab is compared to 
the gentle process by which a wild chrysanthemum is 
fitted to grace the place of honour in a tasteful drawing- 
room. 



The Language of Nipon. 



20 1 



CHAPTER XVI. 



The Language of Nipon. 

A Japanese Writer's Lamentation — Some Common Misconceptions — Pijin 
English and its Uses — The Lingua Franca of the Far East — A Big 
Alphabet — Chinese Tones — Iconographs or Picture-Words — No Declen- 
sions, Conjugations, nor Pronouns — Imperfection of the Colloquial — 
Need of Linguistic Development — Capacity for Combinations — Sus- 
pected Sanskrit Affinities — Etiquette and Honorifics — Future of the 
Colloquial Language. 

ATELY a Japanese writer wrote thus in plaintive 
tones: — "The things of ancient days were 
admirable, but in modern times customs are 
more and more deteriorating. The beautiful 
vessels made by ancient carvers of wood are 
finer, as their forms are the more primitive. 
And so, too, in literature we find that the style 
of language used by the ancients, as preserved 
on every scrap of paper which has come down 
to us from them, is very fine. But at the pre- 
sent time the popular language grows ever worse and 
worse. In the olden time people were accustomed to say 
' Please, raise the vehicle,' * Pray, favour me by elevating 
the lamp-wick.' Now-a-days they bluntly say ' Raise it,' 
' Poke it up,' and thus in many ways the Ministers of 
State, and even what pertains to the sacred majesty of 
the Mikado himself, are spoken of in less honorific 
language than was customary in days of yore.'' 

The fact is the wave of aufkldriing which rose in France 
a century ago has now broken on the shores of those fair 
islands in the Pacific. Words and sentences are fossil 

N 




202* Nine Years in Nipon. 

thoughts. When organic nature rises to a higher level of 
being, effete forms are soon left to bury themselves in the 
preserving rocks. But words are not merely fossils. 
Even when buried in old books they haunt in ghostly 
form the busy throngs of men. 

In China, Corea and Japan the Chinese written 
language is understood by all highly educated men, but I 
find a very common and erroneous impression prevails 
that the Japanese language is just a dialect — a slight 
variation of Chinese. The question is much more 
complex than many suppose, and another common 
misconception must first be cleared away. When two 
Chinamen from provinces not far apart meet, they cannot 
always converse together. If they are educated enough 
to be able to read and write they can communicate 
through the written language as adopted by the officials. 
Very often in settlements like Shanghai they may be 
heard resorting to the much maligned pijiyi or " business " 
English introduced by the " foreign devils." 

Now, had he pronounced the name of the thing wanted 
according to any one or to all of the provincial dialects of 
China successively, he might have entirely failed, to 
convey any idea whatever of what he wished to obtain. 
In short, the Chinese written language chiefly appeals to 
the eye, and in this way is more than the Lingua Franca of 
the Far East. It has also, of course, a sound associated 
with it, and here the real difificulty springs up. The 
sound is usually of one syllable. There are upwards of 
30,000 characters, and necessarily, as we may at once see, 
the same single syllable, say ki, may suggest to the ear a 
great variety of dissimilar ideas, just as our sound-^ 



The Language of Nipon. 203 



* 



we cannot here call it a word — box did to the bewildered 
Frenchman when on a visit to England. Well, the 
Chinese got out of the difficulty by having tones — rising, 
prolonged, falling, etc. — like those with which young 
clergymen studying elocution are driven nearly frantic. 
More correctly perhaps we may suppose that those 
Chinese tones are surviving indications of lost phonetic 
elements in the words thus differentiated. But there are 
no such tones in the Chinese of Japan, or at least they are 
not vividly preserved as an inherent and necessary part of 
the language. The lack of them, however, may turn out 
to be no real misfortune as we shall presently see. I have 
taken as an example the Japanese sound ki (pronounced 
like our key). A Japanese would quite instinctively ask 
you which ki you meant unless the sentence in which it 
occurred guided him clearly, and you would probably 
observe him drawing an imaginary series of hieroglyphs 
with a finger of one hand on the open palm of the 
other. He has learned to a great extent to think in 
Chinese characters. Now, let us take as an analogy our 
astronomical symbols, or our Roman or Arabic numerals. 
Clearly enough you will perceive that each represents the 
same concept or abstract notion to the French or German, 
Englishman, Spaniard or Italian, to whom it may be pre- 
sented. It is also quite evident that the sounds associated 
with the one symbol may be very different to each of the 
nationalities supposed. In the case of Latin again, which 
was used so extensively in the western world during the 
middle ages, and is still so largely a medium of intercourse 
amongst scientific men in all parts of the globe, there are 
different schools of pronunciation, the Scotch and Contin- 



204* Nine Years in Nipon. 

ental, for example, and that of Oxford. So it is with 
Chinese, It is certain that many of the Chinese characters 
were at first what is termed iconographic, representational 
or imitative, sivn^Xy pictorial in other words. 

As writing was more and more used in the daily inter- 
course of men briefer modes of representation were fol- 
lowed, and instead of a completed picture we find a mere 
hurried stroke or two of the pen indicative of the artist's 
intention, for an artist rather than an author he must have 
been at this early stage. Soon the various stages of the 
process might become obscure to later observers from the 
very great ease and rapidity with which the evolution of 
the written language would now take place. 

Sometimes a part only would be made to express the 
whole. Thus in Chinese (and in Japanese also) the icono- 
graph of a tree thrice repeated stands for a forest. There 
is a very strong analogy between the Chinese and Egyp- 
tian modes of expressing ideas, but it would be quite mis- 
leading were I to give the impression that any traces of 
historical continuity have as yet been detected between 
the two languages. It is somewhat striking, however, 
that the Egyptian root ka " form," has at least an analogy 
to the ka in Japanese (and Chinese ?) which is found in 
such words as kage^ shadow or reflection ; karada, body ; 
katachi^ form, shape, etc., etc. 

Leaving out of sight for a little the historically imported 
Chinese alphabet, and dealing as far as may be possible 
with the pre-existing elements of the language, we find 
that it belongs to the agglutinative Tatar or Turanian 
type. Words are not declined or conjugated. 

Ideas are brought into mutual relation by intervening 



The Language of Nipon. \ 205* 

preceding or following particles. There are no pronouns 
in the language, strictly speaking, although practically 
very good substitutes for them exist. The distinction 
between singular and plural is not quite clearly or directly 
brought out, nor has gender any genuine place in the 
grammar. Now, when the Chinese system of writing was 
introduced — and there are no reliable specimens of 
writing prior to that period — the fifty odd simple sounds 
of the Japanese language seem to have had assigned to 
them one, and unfortunately sometimes many, Chinese 
hieroglyphs used phonetically — that is, simply to express 
the Japanese sound. Then as Chinese culture in Japan 
advanced, others were used iconographically, and finally 
the same character might be used both ways, to the utter 
confusion and bewilderment for all time to come of all 
sensible people who don't think pedantic memories be- 
token the highest attainments of intellect. At present it 
is perfectly certain that no sane person — and a fortiori 
no insane one — completely understands and is master 
either of this system or of Buddhist mythology, — the two 
most meaningless freaks the Oriental want of imagination 
has ever produced. A speech addressed to an educated 
Japanese audience, or an official document containing a 
public announcement, departs from the simplicity of the 
earlier language, and is quite as intelligible to ordinary 
natives as a document written in lawyer's or doctor's Latin 
would be to schoolboys who have only learned the de- 
clensions. I have seen a political lecturer — of specially 
popular gifts, mark you — address a great popular audi- 
ence, and every now and again an assistant had to hold 
up a placard containing a catch-cry or striking phrase in 
Chinese characters ! 



202 Nine Years in Nipon, 

The inconveniences resulting from all this complexity 
and obscurity are very great, and various measures have 
been proposed, chiefly since the Restoration, to meet the 
urgent need which has arisen for a simple and more 
effective mode of conveying thought in these days of 
telegraphs and telephones. 

Fortunately the monosyllabic Chinese terms so largely 
adopted lend themselves very readily — as readily as Greek 
or German ones do — to combination. Take the word 
jin-riki-sha, which has occurred frequently in the earlier 
chapters of this work. A Chinaman seeing the characters 
on a sign-board which the Japanese pronounce in this 
way, would at once know that it denoted an office for the 
hire of " man-power-carriages," although he might not 
know how to ask for one in words. The sign would be 
quite as clear to him as that of a finger pointing the way 
under the effigy of a Highlander taking snuff would be to 
us. And to the Japanese all obscurity of sound disappears 
at once on the combination of several signs. The some- 
what recently coined medical and chemical terms are very 
expressive and useful for the most part, and represent the 
stage of physiology and anatomy we have now reached. 
A nerve, for example, is very beautifully and expressively 
called a " soul-thread," and many of the anatomical terms 
explain themselves, instead of being named after some 
ancient physician who first discovered the objects they 
denote. 

The late Prof. Lenormant and Dr. Sayce have supposed 
that the Tatar group is connected with old Chaldean or 
Accadian. I should think, on many grounds, that this is 
highly probable, although the supposition cannot, perhaps, 



The Language of Nipon, 203 

in the nature of things, be very fully verified. Undoubtedly 
there has been pouring into Japan a constant stream of 
Chinese influences even from early times. Special Chinese 
eras have left their traces on the language of Nipon, even 
as regards style of pronunciation. To the present day a 
Chinaman is called in Japan a Nankin man, pointing to a 
period when the south of China was dominant. 

Another early foreign element which has hitherto been 
ignored, is Sanskrit. It is obvious enough that many 
terms might be brought from India along with Buddhism, 
which, however, did not come directly to Japan. But 
apart from this, I have the impression that a closer study 
might reveal some affinity hardly yet suspected. As 
examples of terms which are perhaps of Buddhist origin, 
the following occur to me, but the list might be very con- 
siderably extended. It is to be remembered that 
Buddhism sprung from an Indian tribe which was pro- 
bably of Turanian origin. 

Sewa^ Sanskrit, service, attendance, worship. 

Sewa, Japanese, service, help, duty, business. 

Shiftj S., spirit, soul. 

Shin, J., spirit, soul, pith of a tree. 

Sahae, S., help, assistance. 

Sahai, J., oversight, help. 

Kusa, S., sacred or sacrificial grass. 

Kusa, J., grass. 

Such proper names as Yama, the god of judgment — the 
Pluto of Indian mythology — which is Yemma in Japanese, 
are of course quite numerous. 

There are many examples of what some may term 
merely false analogies, but some of them are striking 



204 Nine Years in Nipon. 

enough, and the number of examples is really consider- 
able. The following may suffice as specimens — 

Na^ S., negative, not. 

iW?, J., negative. 

Hin, S., deficient, destitute. 

Hin^ J., poor, wanting. 

Han, S. (pronounced ha with nasal sound), yes, aye. 

Hai, J., yes, aye. 

Mudka, S., deprived of reason. 

Mtida, J., useless, vain, ineffective. 

Kanaka, S., gold. 

Kane, J., money, metal. 

Shikar, S., hunt, chase. 

Shikari, J., hunt, hunter, sportsman. 

Nak, S., nose. 

Hana, J., nose. 

Bin, S., lute (nasal sound of n). 

Bizva, J., lute. 

Hans, S., goose. 

Gan, J., goose. 

I shall now mention, and very briefly for lack of space, 
some of the more striking and interesting features of the 
language. There is a tendency to make etiquette supreme 
even here, and it requires great alertness to keep oneself 
right, in addressing different classes. In speaking of the 
members of one's own household, humble terms are used ; 
while you must needs grovel to the man who is hardly 
more than your equal. 

In the earlier years of my stay in Japan I blandly asked 
an official how his brat (segare) was. This would have 
been the appropriate and modest term to apply to one's 
own child, as he at once showed by saying, with a smile, 



The Language of Nipon. 205 

the brat was very well indeed. The honourable country, 
or hat, or stick, at once indicates, in spite of the Japanese 
horror of pronouns, that your native land or personal pro- 
perty is referred to with laudatory deference. 

Terms of an evil meaning are rarely used directly in 
courteous conversation, and words of a similar sound, with 
a different meaning, are also studiously avoided. Shi 
means death, and also four, but it is better to use another 
term to express four. The same dread of words of evil 
omen is widely spread amongst nations in a low stage of 
culture, as for example, in Samoa (see Turner's Samoa^ p. 

33)- 

The Japanese use water greatly, and I was not sur- 
prised, therefore, to find that their vocabulary is mar- 
vellously rich in expressive terms connected with rain, 
hot water, cold water, and the like. So it is with rice 
culture, navigation, fishing, and other industries which are 
prominent in the country ; the terms connected with 
them are numerous, and full of fine distinctions, illustrat- 
ing the value of what Dugald Stewart called " attention." 

I venture to doubt whether some have not spoken a 
little too deprecatingly of the colloquial language. It does 
indeed occupy a very ignoble position in Japan at present, 
but there are new and powerful forces now in operation, 
which must inevitably raise its level somewhat. It is 
necessary only to mention the growth of public speaking, 
which will, I am sure, become more and more a necessity 
as the liberal movement towards popular representation 
becomes realised in living institutions. When the collo- 
quial language, which is a necessity in the senate and on 
the platform, becomes a powerful political engine, it will 



206 Nine Years in Nipon. 

speedily come to be associated with the grandest and 
gravest thoughts in the minds of the people. Even now 
one might almost detect some rising perception of the 
ridiculousness of the inflated style now in use amongst the 
educated classes. In a colloquial newspaper which is said 
to have by far the largest circulation in Japan, a writer 
argues that the sinical authors, that is those who write in 
Chinese, are like artists whose sketches of dragons and 
other fabled animals, which nobody ever saw to compare 
them with, seem wonderfully accurate and beautiful, but 
when the same gentlemen condescend to draw anything 
from real life their failures are very conspicuous. He 
ends by very sensibly advocating greater care on the part 
of colloquial writers in securing fidelity to the facts of na- 
ture. The idea may perhaps be thought suggestive of the 
future prospects of this part of the language. 

Some writers on the subject ignore the existence of 
works of a grave cast in colloquial Japanese. Not to speak 
of volumes of well-known sermons by different Japanese 
authors several minor Christian publications have already 
been issued and circulated widely, and many others are 
projected. 

One or two lucid and lively little scientific brochures 
have also recently got into print, and been widely circu- 
lated amongst an intelligent class who cannot read books 
in the Chinese style, and who crave for something more 
solid than romances of the old school, or the blood and 
thunder of the half-penny dailies that circulate largely 
in Tokio. A strong crusade has been initiated against 
Chinese as a medium for scientific purposes. Those who 
have distinguished themselves chiefly in the advocacy 



TJie Language of Nipon. 207 

have unfortunately not enjoyed any great reputation as 
Chinese scholars amongst their countrymen in Japan, but 
nevertheless the time has now come when it may fairly be 
raised as a practical question whether Japanese progress 
is compatible with the fetters imposed by such a compli- 
cated system as the use of the Chinese characters in- 
volves. English has also been proposed for adoption, and 
it is easy for foreigners to learn because it is blunt, 
truthful, straightforward. An excellent business man — a 
German — told me that his countrymen in the far east 
greatly preferred to carry on their correspondence in Eng- 
lish even with other Germans ! 

It has been proposed as a kind of compromise to use 
Romanised transliterations of the Japanese characters. 
The difficulties in the way are great. An accurate ortho- 
graphy sacrifices the practical benefit of an agreement 
in the spelling with the prevailing pronunciation. Nikko 
would be spelled Nitsukuau, while Tokio would be 
lengthened into Toukiyau. Were the Japanese to adopt 
the Italian vowels and spell their words as good speakers 
now sound them, it is dreaded that we might make one or 
two mistakes as to how those words were spelled many 
centuries ago — a catastrophe too appalling for us seriously 
to contemplate ! My only fear is that the love of com- 
plexity is too deeply engrained in the Japanese mind for 
us to hope for immediate great benefits from any new sys- 
tem. Japanese learn to write our script characters with 
great elegance and clearness. But in the main street of 
Tokio there is a gilded sign-board gracefully written in 
English letters, but so cleverly obscure that almost no 
^' Anglo-Saxon " could tell what it is meant to convey. 



2o8 Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
Schools. 

General Diffusion of Education in Japan — Educational Influence of Bud- 
dhism — Statistics — Duration of School Period — Genuine Accomplish* 
ments — Heroes of the School — Pens, Ink, and Paper — Introduction of 
Arabic Numerals — A Japanese Writer on Girls' Schools. 

DURING my whole residence in Japan, I was 
meeting daily with large numbers from the lower 
strata of the people, but I can only recall one or two 
clear instances in my experience of Japanese people 
having been unable to write and read. The fact struck 
me very much even in the first year of my sojourn, that 
the people have all had at least a fair elementary education. 
On the authority of the American Consul-General, Van 
Buren, and which my limited experience quite confirms, 
the small peasant farmers can nearly all read, write, and 
keep accounts. Curiously enough, the same impression 
was made on my mind while living amongst the Nepalese 
and other Himalayan tribes. I am disposed to believe 
that the cause may be Buddhism — not that the Nepalese 
are all Buddhists, but I think the schools probably owed 
their origin to that humane religion. In China what we 
western people loosely call Confucianism has long been 
noted for its intense devotion to education ; but even 
there a question rises as to the role played by that new 
and genial enthusiasm of humanity which came from 
India. We have hardly yet, I believe, fully compre- 



Schools. 209 

hended the vast influence the swordless creed of Shakya 
has exerted over the world. It everywhere taught the 
unity and brotherhood of man, and so literature could no 
longer be maintained as the peculiar possession of any 
caste of mere priests or princes. 

There are probably at present some 30,000 common 
schools throughout the empire, and these are attended by 
about 3,000,000 of scholars, or about an average of 100 
scholars to each school. More precisely, the records 
show : — 

1883. 1882. 

Common Schools, 29,081 28,908 

Scholars, 3,004,137 2,616,879 

Teachers, 84,765 7^,7^9 

Steady improvement has of late been observed from year 
to year. The various schools in connection with Pro- 
testant, Greek, and Roman missions — which are now 
numerous, well attended, and in several cases very 
influential — are probably not included, I think, in the 
official statistics. A large number, also, of the better-off 
class have their children taught privately at home. 

Now in Scotland there are about I4'92 per cent, of the 
people attending school, while in England there are 15*87 
per cent., yet those figures do not really imply that the 
people of England are better educated than those of 
Scotland. The contrary is perhaps nearer the truth ; but 
the simple explanation is that the infant schools which 
are so popular in England have not yet met with much 
favour from the cautious people north of the Tweed. 
Well, the average attendance in Japan is undoubtedly 
lower than in this country. I think we might suppose 



210 Nine Years in Nipon. 

twelve to thirteen per cent, to be somewhat near the 
truth. Are their children, then, not kept so long at 
school as ours? This question resolves itself into two 
others — Do they begin as early? Do they remain as long? 
Educationalists are coming to agree pretty well that the 
age of seven is physiologically soon enough to exercise 
the growing brain. Our own children, unfortunately, go 
much earlier than this. A Japanese child is often 
suckled till he is four, and he rarely enters school till he 
is at least six. Fully as many hours a day are spent in 
study by a Japanese boy as by one of our, own; the 
amount of mere memory work to be achieved is greater, 
and the pure active recreation is very much less. I do 
not think they remain so long at school, and this is more 
especially the case with girls, for several social reasons on 
which I need not enter here. Of course the quality of the 
education given opens an entirely different question. 

A famous preacher once rebuked the then fashionable 
taste in education in a striking way. An accomplished young 
lady who had paraded before him all her gifts and graces, 
was first highly flattered, and then asked, to the horror of 
her well-to-do papa, if she could shampoo. The irate sire 
answered for her, with severe dignity, " I may be poor 
perhaps, but my daughter has not had to stoop to sham- 
pooing yet." The rabbi replied, smiling, " If her father- 
in-law or mother-in-law should become sick, plaiting 
flowers and artistically making and presenting tea will be 
of little avail," and so on, to the confusion of his well- 
meaning host. Since then great educational reforms have 
been carried out both in regard to matter and methods. 

The general impression one receives in travelling all 



Schools. 211 

over the country, with eyes and ears open, is that educa- 
tion is very highly esteemed by every class, and that some 
genuine sacrifice will readily be made to obtain it for their 
children. In a very popular ^^-^-penny dreadful, a writer 
addressing the lowest possible class of readers, complains 
of the neglect of their offspring, shown by many parents 
in this respect. A child, he says, when left alone becomes 
a poor prairie flower instead of a magnificent spray of 
blossom to grace the chief vase in a drawing-room. At 
present the poorest child in the remotest hamlet may 
hope, if mentally qualified, to become a European or 
American-trained Tokio professor. One of the greatest 
heroes of boyish imaginations is the hard-working peasant 
lad who, when too poor to buy oil for his midnight lamp, 
learned to read the classics by the soft green radiance of 
fireflies which he imprisoned in cages of rush. Another 
mythical model for imitation is Ono no Tofu, one of the 
most famous penmen of antiquity who, like Robert the 
Bruce under the teaching of a spider, was stimulated to 
noble and courageous perseverance by watching the long 
continued struggles of a frog which was trying to climb a 
willow tree, and which was at last successful. 

The hardships a Scotch student will endure in trying to 
convert the wholesome national porridge and kail into 
theological metaphysics or calvinistic marine-engines of a 
rather workable kind, could hardly excite greater admira- 
tion than those I have often witnessed to be most 
patiently borne by students of medicine in Tokio. Every 
teacher from the West speaks with favour of the capacity 
for memory work of the Japanese student, and the college 
records of Europe and America can now show a fair amount 



212 Nine Years in Nipon. 

of original work done by them. Dr. Delaunay says the 
young Japanese at Paris excel the French boys up to the 
sixteenth year, and I believe a similar result would be 
found in a careful comparison with British or American 
students. Unfortunately this favourable verdict could not 
be repeated at a later stage in their career. Most natives 
of Japan skilled in educational matters are ready to reverse 
it in the advanced stages of a life which consists of study. 
While the reason may be largely physiological, it must also 
be remembered that there is not the same social stimulus as 
in our countries after college associations are broken up. 
In old-fashioned schools — and these necessarily are still 
very numerous — the classics, or rather selections from 
them, are rhymed over, and the sounds which are at first 
perfectly meaningless to the pupil, are committed to 
memory, in a very peculiar and never-to-be-forgotten 
sing-song falsetto. Each sentence ends abruptly, as if 
the pupil's head had been suddenly cut off by a guillotine. 
When a doubtful word or character occurs, the last note 
is sustained in a quavering way till the clue has been 
found. The shrill notes of half-a-dozen children in a 
household are very striking when you are walking about 
the by-streets of Tokio in the evening. 

There is no such thing as expression in reading the 
classics. How could there be ? And yet their story-tellers 
are perfect masters in the art of modulating the voice. The 
passages read are afterwards explained just as our Scrip- 
tures are in Sunday schools, by the aid of popular com- 
mentaries, and strange to say, the commentators do not 
always agree. I think this is done much more carefully 
and frequently than many suppose, and as a matter of 



Schools. 2 1 3 

fact, the writings of the great Chinese moralists are 
pretty well known to all educated people. 

Penmanship is laid great stress upon, and there are 
many different styles in use. Beautiful models, like our 
headlines for copybooks, are to be found in all stationers, 
and are usually on a much larger scale than we are accus- 
tomed to use — wherein lurks a useful hint to our own 
educationalists. The paper used is the ordinary unsized 
tissue paper, commonly called Chinese paper in this 
country. The Japanese make many different qualities of 
it, quite unlike that made in China. Chinese ink is 
used, and it requires a great deal of moisture and 
much laborious rubbing down before the pupil can 
begin work — facts which contain untold worlds of 
comfort to an urchin who loves to do anything but 
study, and yield many amusing subjects for the cari- 
caturist. The pen used is made of a reed in which a 
well-made cone of stiff paper is inserted and covered with 
goat or antelope hair. It is called dif74.de. The pupils learn 
to draw, or rather paint, the Chinese and Japanese script 
characters with such hair pencils in a bold, free, sweeping 
hand — the action not being confined to the v/rist so much 
as with us. Writers' cramp has been declared by a dis- 
tinguished German writer on medicine to be due to the 
modern use of steel pens. I have seen a very well marked 
instance in Japan, in the case of a person who had never used 
any but a Japanese fude. Steel pens are now being intro- 
duced, however, and are called penu^ while our ink is 
called inku^ which shows the fallacy of arguing that pens 
and ink were only introduced into Ceylon when the 
foreign words which name them were first introduced. 



214 Nme Years in Nipon. 

The use of the pencil in this way naturally leads to a 
sweeping free hand style of drawing which possibly may 
not have been entirely favourable to scientific precision of 
detail, in which some pretend to find Japanese art lacking. 
The lack is somewhat imaginary, however. In Tokio 
there is a sacred Pencil-Mound or Fude-dztiku, into which 
school children solemnly cast the stumps of their used-up 
hair-pencils ; but in Japan there is no special sacredness 
about printed or written paper as in China, where it is 
always solemnly consumed by fire — a good rule which 
might well be more extended in its application. 

The black-board is used in all schools now, and the 
artistic tendencies of the people are often well displayed 
on it. Colours and forms are very generally taught by 
the use of appropriate objects on the modern method, and 
sheets of object lessons are hung around the walls. Slates 
and slate-pencil are now manufactured in Japan itself, and 
are seemingly as good as those imported. The Arabic 
numerals are fast displacing the old Chinese system, 
which is quite as clumsy as the Roman. The soroban 
(abacus) is always taught, and is used for the most trivial 
calculations by hucksters, shopkeepers, bankers, and 
official treasurers, all through the country. It affords 
time to meditate as to the capacity of the purchaser, and 
is, in fact, indispensable to the orthodox Japanese or 
Chinese man of business. Mental arithmetic has been 
introduced, but it has not been taken kindly to, and it is 
not at all uncommon to get the wrong amount of change 
even at the Imperial Post Office in Tokio. 

I close this short chapter by a few lines from an inter- 
esting essay by Shioji Takato (one of the Japanese stud- 



Schools. 215 

ents sent to America by the Government), on the Co- 
Education of Boys and Girls. 

'' In music, there are a thousand instruments, each dif- 
fering from the other in its pitch and sound. The object, 
however, is not to separate them, but to unite and har- 
monize them, so as to produce an enchanting melody, 
which can never be obtained from any single sound. So 
the object of God in creating all things and beings, and 
giving them forms and characters differing from one an- 
other, is, no doubt, to unite them and produce a temper- 
ate and accomplished whole. The burning wind of the 
tropics uniting with the freezing blasts from the poles, 
causes the mild and temperate clime, where spring flowers 
smile and spontaneous products grow. God has given 
the man a character bold and strong ; the woman, one 
mild and gentle, differing one from the other as the 
piercing sound of the flute from the soft tones of the harp. 
His object is evident in itself, and requires no solution. 
Look at the nations who are treating woman as a slave or 
as an instrument of their sport, they are very low in their 
civilization, and like wild beasts, are constantly biting and 
fighting. 

" From the law of God, and the instances furnished by 
those nations, I see then, clearly, that the characters of 
the sexes must blend and help each other : or otherwise 
great discord in the music of nature will be the result. 
Female colleges and academies are excellent and impor- 
tant institutions ; but they have nothing to do in the mat- 
ter of tempering the characters of the sexes. Only in co- 
education of the sexes can we secure both ends at once : 
the cultivation of their intellects and the harmonizing of 



2i6 Nine Years m Nipon. 

their characters, ... the saucy mischlevousness of 
the boys will be tempered by the gentle politeness of the 
girls, and the vain fancy and timid weakness of the girls 
will take on the primitive simplicity and determined 
steadiness of the boys ; and, at last, a moderate, accom- 
plished, and unblemished virtue and culture will be attain- 
ed by both the sexes." 

He goes on to deal with the objection that evils may 
arise from the joint education of boys and girls, and hum- 
orously meets the case by the example of two country 
people who caught a pair of young foxes. One of them 
brought up his amongst the barn-door fowls, and it never 
did them any harm, while the other timorously kept his 
poultry out of his young pupil's sight, with the worst 
results in the end. 



The Land of Neglected Education. 217 




CHAPTER XVIII. 

A Glimpse of the Land of Neglected Education. 



The Carlyle and Thackeray of Japan — Bakin's Idea of the Genuine Gentle- 
man — Geography of the Land — The Natives and their Strange Ways — 
Bad Schoolboys in Japan — Apprenticeship — Coddling and its Conse- 
quences — A Family Scene — Breaking the Indentures — On the Streets — 
Moral. 



Y favourite Japanese author, Takizawa Sakichi — 
at once the Carlyle and Thackeray of Japan — 
better known by his nom-de-plume of Bakin, 
published the work from which the following 
extracts are translated, in 1809-10. It is based 
on an older story of mystical adventure like 
Sinbad the Sailor., and is a powerful and 
clever satire on the manners of the author's countrymen 
at the beginning of this century. The following is part 
of a translation which I contributed to the Chrysanthemu7n 
a few years ago, and has probably been seen only by a 
very few in this country. I had hoped ere this to have 
issued a complete English edition of this interesting and 
valuable work, but a tedious illness intervened which has 
led to delay. 

Bakin belongs clearly to a modern and yet power- 
ful school of Conservative Radicalism, which keenly 

questions everything as to its right to exist, but with 

o 



2i8 Nine Years in Nipon. 

which thought and progress Is not essentially a mere 
crude process of demolishing whatever is. 

No one, he says, In looking at the flayed (unclothed) 
mass of clay which was once a living man can tell what 
its rank had been, but the true gentleman, he elsewhere 
shows, is the honourable man of reading and culture, who 
modestly but strenuously does his duty in the world, 
though his robes be threadbare and his sword rust-eaten. 

GLIMPSE OF THE ISLAND OF NEGLECTED EDUCATION. 

*' This land lies amid the surging tides of Good and 
Evil, in the bone-strewn Ocean of Coddling, and its title 
is announced on a pillar of stone. 

" When you look into the condition of those who are 
born in this place, you find that from the age of seven or 
eight to the sixteenth year, inclusive, may be deemed their 
special period. During this time the clothes are tucked 
in at the shoulders and skirts, ' lost-child tickets ' * are 
attached to the amulet bag, the hair is shaved away at the 
crown in a patch shaped like a koban (an ovoid gold 
piece), while it remains long all round. The hair may 
also be dressed in what is called from its shape the 
* dragon-fly,' with its four tassels ; or the clean shave all 
over, called the ' poppy-head priest' However, as the 
natives of the island heartily hate having the stubble 
shaved or the hair knotted in any way, the prevailing 
fashion is what may be called the * unkempt mop.' . . . 
They climb trees like monkeys, swim in water like 

* Those contain the name and address of the child ; the practice is one 
which might well be imitated. 



The Land of Neglected Education. 219 

kelpies, hide in grass like hares, and take their bath like 
crows. They care nothing for nail rents in their clothes, 
nor for raw wounds in their limbs. They rejoice to 
brandish about big sticks, and to set dogs a-fighting ; 
they dote upon mice, and keep them confined in cages 
jingling bells. In spring-time, forgetting all about the 
dinner hour, they scatter with their kite-strings the 
neighbours' plum blossoms ; in summer they catch cicadas, 
beat down bats, and delight in the sinful taking of life ; 
in autumn they chase dragon-flies in the fields ; in winter 
they smash the ice about the back door and roll up great 
snowballs, and although they may sometimes collect fire- 
flies wherewith to make a lantern, they are by no means 
fond of reading books by its aid. 

" As for the one only duty they have to perform, they sit 
opposite a desk from eight o'clock till two, and although 
they take a hair-pencil in hand they do not learn to make 
therewith a single dash or dot. When tired of drawing 
men's heads they slobber over their tissue-paper copy- 
books with moisture, so as to make an appearance of work 
before the teacher.* They lick their brushes as if they 
were applying tooth-blacking (like their mammas), and 
besmear their hands and faces till they are inkier even 
than their copy-books. They wipe their noses on the 
sleeves of their robes, and run about naked in the porch. 
When they are made to show themselves to visitors, they 
bite their thumbs and slip away backwards like a cat from 
a bag ; but they push themselves readily enough in front 

* A Japanese copy-book is a kind of complicated palimpsest, being written 
over and over again. New and moist letters as they dry, fade into the 
general blackness. 



220 Nine Years in Nipon. 

of those weaker than themselves, and with tongues Hkc 
razors, call them ugly names. Sometimes they plunge 
with full intention into puddles, and don't mind dirtying 
their sandals a bit. They poke holes in the paper lanterns, 
playfully dig into the wall plaster, eat earth or even 
ransack the family altar and gobble up the incense. 
Rewards and punishments are not strictly 
administered there, and so when there is anything eatable 
in view the natives stick to the spot and are ever prone to 
snatch and swallow. Peaches, persimmons, pears, grapes, 
musk-melons, water-melons, and oranges of all kinds they 
devour like so many hungry monkeys. Pumpkins and 
sweet potatoes they esteem as special luxuries. They 
are addicted to dumplings and bean-cake, or coming 
lower down in the scale, they revel in all sorts of hard- 
bake and cheap buns, but rarely do they indulge in 
tobacco or beer. 

" Once only in a twelvemonth, when the new year pine- 
trees still remain before the doors do they don their holiday 
robes of fine hempen cloth, put on the airs of the big folks^ 
and for a little while walking on from gate to gate, do 
they look consequential ; but on the way home, all in 
their pompous dresses of ceremony, they weariedly crave 
to be carried pick-a-back. 

" At the festival of the fox spirits who guard the rice 
fields, they eat and drink like hysterical tabby-cats, and 
for two or three days together never think of returning to 
their homes. On the fifth month, when the sacred flags 
are set up before the gate, they brandish about the leaves 
of the iris for sword blades, hang dangling from the piles 
that prop the flag-staff or climb the pole itself, hand over 



TJie Land of Neglected Education. 221 

hand, sending a cold shiver through the livers of frightened 
onlookers. 

"Writing does not take more than three years to 
master, and so, when two or three copy-books have been 
gone through, such a one, supposing himself to be already 
of some use in the world, and that the son of a poor man 
does not need to go very deeply into anything, gives the 
teacher his dismissal. But when he is sent off to serve an 
apprenticeship, he finds that it is not just the same thing 
as playing about at home. 

" He can't wait for the two annual holidays usually 
allowed, but while going a message he now and again 
drops into the parental dwelling in passing ; and when, 
perchance, being sent to accompany his master home with 
a paper lantern, he peeps in, the old folks are set quite 
purring with delight, and exclaim : * Now, now, there will 
be lots of time before sundown, so you can stay at least to 
eat a little rice before you go I'll boil some of the pump- 
kin you are so fond of, deary. But, O gracious ! how 
much thinner you are than when you lived at home, no 
doubt from the badness of the food they are giving you.' 
And so saying, the mother takes the greasy boxwood 
comb which is sticking in her hair and smoothes the 
recent stubbly growth on her boy's temples, while he 
himself is delighted down to the inmost layer of his 
frame ; and so thinking this is rather a jolly state 
of affairs, he begins to tell how his workmates 
bully him, how the foreman boxes his ears daily, how the 
mistress makes him peel radishes, how the master once 
bade him draw water, and how whilst he was going to do 



222 Nine Years in Nipon. 

so he slipped on the slimy well-planks, how he barked his 
knee-pans, how he never said as much as that it pained 
him, and how he was then scolded and called a " useless 
piece,' and, ' Boo — hoo — hoo ! I ca — ca — can't help it ; 
but — boo — hoo, for a, for a lo — lo — lo — ong time back, 
boo — hoo ! ! I haven't eaten my three daily meals at all 
we — we — we — well ! ! ! ' 

" And so as he is grumbling through his long list of ima- 
ginary grievances, as if they were real, crying and sobbing 
all the while, his mother no longer able to restrain her 
feelings begins also to wail, saying : — 

" Since he was quite a little boy he has always been so 
subject to headaches, and I am sure that even had he been 
a Lord Buddha of the hardest metal he would not forget 
it were he to have his ears boxed in that way every day ! 
As for his master, — master forsooth ! making these little 
eleven or twelve years' old arms draw water! I would 
master him ! He might think of his own pet child a bit, — 
and — then — he — would — p'rhaps — have — a — little — more 
— sympathy — -peeling — Radishes !!! — They are such horrid 
things to peel, too ! Why — how — ever — in — the — world 
— could even a big man in cold weather help letting them 
slip from his fingers — and not a word of setting him to 
learn the real business of the shop either ; and what's 
more too, setting him to stand before the kitchen fire 
cooking, was a think never mentioned in his contract ! 
Well, smashing the poor little knee-pan must have been a 
dreadfully sore thing ! 

" Come, deary, I will put some ' White-scented Dragon ' 
ointment on the place. ' Show me your knee,' on which 
the urchin displays a tiny scratch. The fond parent for 



The Land of Neglected Education. 223 

whom, according to the proverb, * the needle has grown 
into a crow-bar,' never dreams, however, that the wound 
was really acquired during a wrestling bout in the recrea- 
tion room of a public bath-house ! 

" However, after having silently searched the drawers 
of her needle-box, and taken out from thence a shell con- 
taining some ointment, she screams out in a voice like 
to burst herself, and frightening away the neighbours : — 

" ' Oh, how very patient the poor child has been up till 
now ! No ; it will never do to keep him there another day ; 
that it won't ! You,' to her husband, 'just go away 
smartly, and get him released.; off with you now at 
once ! ! ! ' 

" The father, not at all liking the commission assigned 
to him, nevertheless gets his boy released from his inden- 
tures to a painstaking master who, quite aware of the 
youth's propensity to cheat him out of the price of many 
a feast was fondly hoping that time might improve him. 

" ' Seeing that we have now taken him back,' reflects 
the father, * people's tongues would be sure to be set a- 
wagging were he to be allowed to play about again. 
Look here, now ! ' says he, turning to the hopeful youth, 
* in summertime you may now go about and try your luck 
at selling peaches. I'll do all the marketing for you my- 
self, and you may keep for pocket-money all you can 
make. Only mind you don't sell below first cost. I won't 
take anything back from you at all, so you may buy 
whatever you've a mind to.' 

" From that day forward the urchin does just as he likes 
with himself; learns the various uses of small cash, is 
prematurely knowing about sundry questionable matters, 



224 Nijie Years in Nipon. 

hangs about the dancing-saloons, swallows voraciously at 
drinking matches, and soon forgets all the useful things 
he may have seen or heard. 

" There are many parents in this Island of Neglected 
Education who, after having failed to lend a helping hand 
to their offspring, blame the companions who associate 
with their children, as if they, forsooth, had been their 
bitterest enemies 

*' Let a restive horse have nothing else for its legs to do, 
and it will be sure to kick some one ; but if you ride it 
about skilfully, curbing here and checking there, and 
giving it no rest for its limbs, there will be no more 
attempts to fling. Now, the human heart is just such an 
unruly colt as this. 

" If children are from early infancy taught reading, 
arithmetic, literature, and military science, to as advanced 
stages as may be possible in the station of life to which 
they belong, and are pulled in day by day from one exer- 
cise and guided to another — while in the intervals of such 
instruction they are brought to the parental home, and 
taught to hand round tea and conduct themselves pro- 
perly in society ; then, from morning to night there will 
be little leisure left for their minds to wander into evil 
paths." 



My Garden and its Guests. 225 



CHAPTER XIX. 

My Garden and its Guests. 

A Dull Look-out — From Chaos to Cosmos — Shower of Frogs (?) — A Rare 
Hedge of Roses — How the Japanese treat Sick Trees — Painters and 
Pine-trees — Pine-boring Insect — Some Curious Spiders — A Fable fresh 
from Nature — Ants and Aphides — An Entomological Pharisee — Nest of 
the Mantis — Sons of the Prophets — A Flight of Dragon-flies — Moles 
and Worms — Curious Superstition — Committee Fever and Dame 
Nature's Soothing Syrup. 



TARTLING was the contrast of my lot in 
/ Tokio with the free mountain life in India I 
had just left. Here I was now, at all events 
almost like the Dutch in Deshima, cooped up 
in a dreary concession — a few acres of flat, 
reedy, forced ground, giving no chance even 
when duty permitted of enjoying a rustic walk without 
first crossing monotonous miles of uninviting streets. The 
prospect was especially dreary to one who, though in no 
sense a naturalist, has always found in nature a chief 
recreation and pleasure. 

So to console myself I set about to cultivate a garden — 
not a frame wherein to set trim Italian parterres, but simply 
a place to group trees, shrubs, and plants, leaving them to 
grow pretty much as Nature herself had trained them to 
do. The soil was damp, and when you dug down to a 
distance of two feet the trench filled with water like sand 
at the sea-shore. This water was brackish, too, and in- 




226 Nine Years in Nip on. 

creased with the pressure of the rising tide, rising some 
time after it rose, and sinking tardily with the ebb. I 
examined it frequently in the microscope, and found it to 
be swarming with minute organisms of many kinds. This 
fact had a very important relation locally, I thought, to 
two epidemics of cholera which visited that crowded dis- 
trict, carrying off many victims in quite a systematic way. 

Great multitudes of frogs haunted this reedy flat, and 
one day when crossing a portion of it, after continued 
drought, there was a sudden heavy fall of rain. A few 
minutes afterwards I saw that the ground was teeming 
with tiny frogs, and one would naturally have supposed 
that they had rained from the clouds. I found, however, 
that they were radiating in tens of thousands from an old 
marshy spot in Tsukiji — the district in which the con- 
cession lies — had quite recently been filled up. After I 
got our bit of ground drained, frogs disappeared never to 
return. 

When our patients grew too numerous for the little 
waiting-room to contain them comfortably, the garden 
was a great boon on hot midsummer afternoons. Some 
of the sick folks were heartily glad to sit down under the 
cool shadowy greenwood, and chat or smoke while await- 
ing their tun;i. To help the drainage, which was naturally 
bad, and could not be aided much artificially, I got some 
great pine trees (Pinus Massoniana), from a kind of mall 
up the river, and had them successfully transplanted in 
the dispensary ground, where they are still flourishing 
grandly. To these in course of time I added some varie- 
ties of Eucalyptus^ a hedgerow of wildly mingled roses, 
camellias, Cydonia Japonica, holly, and other plants which 



My Gardeii and its Guests. 227 

I cannot name ; and by-and-by a good Christian friend, 
Mr. Tsuda Sen, as well known in Japan for his scientific 
zeal as for his philanthropic enthusiasm, planted a hedge 
of fine American rose bushes all along the front of our in- 
stitution, the richly blushing beauty of which for a month 
or so was one of the recognised wonders of the district, 
and for a week or two after their glory was gone the road 
was thickly strewed with their crimson-pink petals. The 
rubbish left over from the building was decently interred 
by a gardener in several mounds of severe geological 
accuracy, covered over with smooth-shaven turf, and 
finally crowned with tastefully gnarled pines, which any 
one would have been ready to affirm, in the newest and 
most solemn fashion, had been growing there undisturbed 
for a quarter of a century at the very least One of those 
pines sickened and threatened to die — it pined away in 
fact. Our gardener prescribed a barrel of the best sake 
or rice-beer as an infallible remedy, and when the colossal 
*' eye-opener " was being tenderly administered I over- 
heard two of our carpenters lamenting that human beings 
should so seldom receive similar kindly treatment. The 
remedy was ineffectual, however, and the tree died — a 
western expression, by the way, which, when literally 
rendered, sounded quite uncouth and laughable to the 
Japanese, who nevertheless have sturdy survivals of tree- 
spirit worship in their midst to-day. 

Japanese artists have usually caught very well the 
aspects of their national pine trees — the crooked, gouty 
elbows of the great branches, the knobby angularities 
of the finer ones, the general massing of the pine 
needles, which vary in style with each species, and the 



228 Nine Years in Nipon. 

ruddy flesh - toned trunk with its bark cracking and 
scaHng off in great many - angled plates, which are 
rough and frosted over with pale whitey - green or 
silvery - grey lichens. Amidst the crevices I often 
found little white webs of downy silk, fastened down at 
the corners, in which saltici or hunting spiders had de- 
posited their eggs. On the grey twigs were often myriads 
of curious grey plant-lice (aphides)^ which imitated the 
colour and texture of the bark so closely as to make it 
difficult to observe them even when pointed out. A 
boring insect was very destructive to the growing twigs 
of the piniLs massoniana. I am sure this insect alone 
costs Japan many thousands of pounds annually, but, 
strange to say, in the very excellent display made by the 
Government in the Forestry Exhibition at Edinburgh 
this year (1884) I saw no reference to its existence or 
work. A small fly drops a maggot at the tip of a grow- 
ing shoot from the middle of March to the middle of May. 
The maggot soon pierces the epidermis and works down- 
wards through the heart of the growing twig, and gains 
strength and rapacity with the nourishment it gets. The 
twig bleeds resin in great drops, and soon is nothing but 
a brown hollow cylinder filled with debris. By watching 
the first shrinking of the bud, nipping its tip off with the 
contained maggot, and burning it, some good might be 
done. 

A curious spider used to haunt the pine trees, chiefly, I 
think, in the later summer months and in autumn. It re- 
sembled in colour and texture a collection of remains from 
a spider's banquet on a large scale, and always lay buried, 
and to all appearance dead, amongst the ruins of former 



My Garden and its Guests. 229 

repasts. A scholarly Irish friend of mine on having it 
pointed out as a curiosity in natural history, wittily 
described it as "just like Paddy himself asleep in the 
midst of his midden." So far as I have observed, it 
always has the concealing rubbish arranged longitudinally, 
and it lays itself out carefully in the same direction. Its 
dusty grey-coloured body is warty, but some of the 
projections are pointed and symmetrical, and there are 
some minute spots of deep red also symmetrically 
arranged. These spots are decidedly adverse to conceal- 
ment from human eyes, at all events, and I learned to look 
for them when in doubt as to the presence of a living 
spider. I suppose they may be of service to the species 
as beauty marks. 

The hunting spiders in my garden were numerous 
and very interesting. I was looking at the buds on a fine 
camellia bush one misty morning, when I saw on 
the leaves what I took to be a large jet-black and very 
glossy ant. I don't know what passed through its little 
cerebrum, but it looked at me quickly with a very un-ant 
like and sinister expression which at once arrested my 
attention. When I moved it moved too with all the alert 
vigilance of a Japanese policeman, when you are doing 
nothing wrong. I took to watching it carefully morning 
after morning, and found that our demurely-attired and 
industrious-looking little friend was a most atrocious 
villain of a hunting spider in the meek disguise of an ant, 
and I afterwards discovered a number of similar kinds. 
Nature is full of fables far more fascinating than anything 
poor old ^sop ever palmed off upon an innocent world 
as his own. Many ordinary hunters or saltici were to be 



230 Nine Years in Nipon. 

seen daily, and I think they were more expert than the 
others who lived by stealth. It would be interesting to 
know more of the mental qualities of the insect game pur- 
sued by each species. I have often seen a little silvery 
spider of gobular shape, and I think its role is to look as 
like a glistening drop of dew as possible. I have seen 
them most frequently on the morning lying quietly in the 
centre of their webs and shining just like a rain-drop in 
the sun. There is a little spider with scorpion-like claws 
which probably now represents the earliest type of the 
race, and that I have seen only once in Japan, and 
in proximity to a recently-opened parcel of drugs from 
home. I have never attempted to enumerate the 
varieties of ants found in my garden, but I think I have 
seen nearly all the varieties — or ants resembling them very 
closely — that we have in England, and several others 
besides. 

During one long rainy season a strange thing happened 
which I had never witnessed or heard of, though likely 
enough it may have been described before. Ants, as many 
must know, take an extraordinary interest in plant-lice or 
green-fly. They nurse them, tend them as we do sheep 
or cattle and, I believe, as others also have long ago 
observed, milk them. Now there was a fine young tree which 
began to fade, having been attacked by a host of purply 
chocolate-coloured plant-lice. I had been trying what 
effect on the growth of bark the removing parasites from 
particular twigs would have, and had often observed how 
much worried the ants appeared to be with the liberties 
I took with their herds. Well, going morning after morn- 
ing, I was once surprised to find an elaborate arcade of 



My Gardeit and its Guests, 231 

clay, made by the ants, winding round the stem of the 
tree up to the spot where the leaves gave shelter from the 
heavy rains to the browsing insect cattle ! In another 
spot I found, in the same season, that a colony of similar 
ants had constructed a similar tunnel on a ledge of rock 
to the base of a pine tree on which aphides (plant-lice) 
were feeding very unlike the others just mentioned. The 
larvae of lady-birds preyed on the aphides, too, just as 
they do in England. Another deadly foe to other insects 
was the mantis^ or preying insect. It preys on its neigh- 
bours also, and is so voracious that while I was about to 
impale one alongside of a fat locust, it turned upon its 
companion in tribulation and began to munch at its eye 
quite complacently. Its nest is curious, and looks at first 
like a large oval splash of clay. It is carefully adapted 
to its position, whether in the hollow of a split bamboo or 
the convex surface of a branch, and is not very prominent 
in appearance. I kept one of those nests till a crowd of 
about a hundred hungry young " sons of the prophets " 
emerged on the 28th of June, and began at once their 
career of hypocrisy. As soon as they emerged they began 
to sway to and fro like orators about to begin a speech. 
A cold wind arose, and most of them perished. Japanese 
boys keep those fierce insects and set them to fighting 
like game-cocks. 

In the hot season the dragon-flies used to be a feature 
in our garden. Very often, indeed, was I able to verify 
the marvellously vivid description of our greatest modem 
poet : — 

*' To-day I saw the dragon-fly 

Come from the wells where he did lie. 



232 Nine Years in Nipon. 

An inner impulse rent the veil 
Of his old husk : from head to tail 
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 
He dried his wings : like gauze they grew : 
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew 
A living flash of light he flew." 

We had several varieties of them, and our boys grew very- 
expert in capturing them. One Sunday early in the 
summer of 1882, the wind was blowing gently from the 
east, like our sweet west wind, when great armies of 
crimson-scarlet dragon-flies spread in pairs all over the 
city, and continued to come for the greater part of the 
day. Where they came from, where they went to, or 
what their end was, I never knew. 




Red-bellied Dragon-Jly. 

The branches of a tall Salisbiiria adiantifolia^ with 
leaves like those of the maiden-hair fern, overhung our 
quick set hedge, and in autumn its smooth little nuts and 
pale golden leaves fell in showers about our path. I have 
often heard strangers go into rapturous admiration of this 
kind of tree, which often grows to a great height ; but I think 
it is most ungraceful in the general massing of its foliage, 
and cannot compare for a moment with our own birch. 



My Garden and its Guests. 233 

elm, oak, beech, or ash. I suppose when any one sees 
the leaf for the first time it appears so strange and beauti- 
ful that the conclusion is jumped at that the tree itself 
must be grandly shaped. Nature, however, does not al- 
ways build up her work in this way, and so the Salisburia 
has great sprawling awkward branches, which seem not to 
know quite what to do with themselves, and often give 
up life in despair when there is a high wind. In far back 
times trees of similar foliage grew in certain of the isles 
of Scotland, as their fossils show. 

Cryptomerias, which thrive so well in Japan generally 
did not thrive with us, for what reason I never found 
out. Sometimes from crevices formed by the longitudi- 
nal splitting of the outer bark, a curious juicy cocks- 
comb-like growth protruded and increased to great dimen- 
sions in moist weather. It was of a golden yellow 
colour, deepening at the tips into orange, or even into amber 
brown, and was quite elastic. In the microscope it was 
seen to be composed of large yellow cells, resembling in 
shape the metallic capsules used by artists to contain oil 
pigments, having a shining metallic skin, and being in- 
dented just like them. They were, however, much shorter 
in proportion to their length, and often tapered to a point 
at one extremity. This parasitic growth soon over- 
mastered the trees on which it appeared. 

Moles used to work some devastation, and often there 
were long irregular tunnels near the surface, which were 
said to be the work of shrew-moles. The Japanese place 
near mole-hills a piece of wood shaped like this T, for 
owls to sit on at night, and they make special efforts to 
destroy them in March and April, when the nests are found 



234 Nine Years in Nipon, 

in the larger mounds, at their base and on a level with the 
ground, or just a few inches below it. Once when I was 
putting a snake into a bottle of alcohol it disgorged a large 
shrew-mole which seemed quite beyond its capacity. 
I was led to notice the effects of the work of moles, or 
the peculiar shrew-mole (Urotrichus)o{]^.^^Xi, in burying 
objects lying on the surface. 

Great fires sweep over Tokio in the winter time, leaving 
wide patches strewn on the surface with bits of roof tiles. 
By and by spring comes round ; moles throw up mounds, 
and the rain washes them down to the common level. 
Grass and weeds spring up and catch the dust. Another 
year passes and the process is repeated, so that in three 
or four years there is an inch or so of soil above the layer 
of brick-bats, with luxuriant vegetation of rank grass or 
wormwood scrub growing atop, as if man had not at all 
recently visited the spot. 

I have watched the work of earth-worms in different 
parts of Japan, and found them to have the habits so care- 
fully observed and described by Mr. Darwin. Glass 
has not been very long used in Japan, but I was surprised 
to find how often small particles of glass were to be found 
in their casts. In Japan, too, they often have the paths 
to their subterranean mansions tidily paved with tiny 
pebbles. On the whole I think moles may have greater 
influence in certain localities than earth-worms, in slowly 
atnd unintentionally burying superficial objects, and the 
amount of soil turned up by them appeared to me very 
striking as observed while on railway journeys in Scotland 
during the springs of this and last year. 

A curious superstition prevails in Japan that certain in- 



My Garden and its Guests. 



235 



juries — to the skin chiefly, and of a superficial and sudden 
character not easily accounted for — are due to the malev- 
olence of an animal called the itachi. There is such 
an animal, and I have seen them several times in my gar- 
den, and heard their curious eerie scream. One even- 
ing, when about to hold a meeting, an itachi met me on 

a shaded path. It was 
screaming loudly, and in a 
very extraordinary manner, 
and did not desist when I 
Teeth of an Itachi. wcnt closc Up to it. Japa- 

nese patients and others shouted to me to beware, but I 
got a broom and " went for it," a compliment which it was 
evidently about to return. I paused, reflected a little — and 
found it was just about time to open my meeting. How- 
ever, the nasty brute kept whining away for some time. 
I suppose it to be allied to our Scotch stoat, and it 
changes its colour in a similar way. 





Japanese Stoat (Itachi), Drawii from Life. 



Several salt water creeks or canals intersect the " foreign 
concession," and some of them run up close to our ground. 
Many a time when coming from a series of committee 
meetings — and on Saturdays we had sometimes three 
or four of them — feeling flushed and heated (this was 



236 Nme Years in Nipon. 

in summer of course), and growling to myself some- 
thing in this fashion :— " Now, there's that beastly fellow 
Jones : they say, indeed, that he left the prospect of a fine 
west-end church to come out here— umph ! Pity of the 
west-enders if he had stayed, that's all I can say ! and as 
for the Greek and Latin that his friends brag about, why 
he always adds r to idea ; and I have heard him leave out 
his Ks twice at the very least ! ! The fellow's a fool, and 
perhaps something worse ; and to go and smash up my 
well-planned motion by that dirty dodge of an amendment 
of his ! ! ! Well, I'll make it warm for that leering fellow 
Smith and him yet, or," etc, etc., etc.— then I would sit 
down in a favourite little lower-step of a ruined landing- 
place, where I was hid from the world, and feel the fresh 
sea breeze play on my burning temples, and the gentle 
lap of the wavelets soothing away all care ; then perhaps a 
little dipper would mysteriously emerge from the depths, 
shiveringly send a little fountain of silver drops about it, 
look at me with a comic look of sudden enquiry, and dip 
again to leave me in deep suspense as to which point 
of the compass it would next emerge from ; and ah ! — 
there's a sooty shag dashing into the creek a little further 

down. 

Great numbers of a kind of sea-slater — not the 
borers I have already described — are crawling over the 
shingle and large stones which line the canal banks. 
A sparrow, just like our English sparrow, runs after 
some of them in a way quite absurd and improper for an 
orthodox and well-bred sparrow to do. Poor little slaters, 
or whatever you call yourselves, you have your amuse- 
ments, too, for I have watched you gambolling, humor- 



My Garden and its Guests. 



237 



ously wrestling and tumbling about like a pair of young 
lizards or boys, or anything else that lives and moves and 
has conscious being. 

A rat peeping around makes a very circuitous route to 
its hole and darts in suddenly, while swallows are career- 
ing close to the surface of the water, and a kind of gull, 
which breeds not far off, seems almost to be imitating the 
circular flight of kites high up in the air, the cry and 
straight flight of crows, the short circular journeys of groups 
of house pigeons, and the ways of ducks on the water, — 
truly a versatile bird is the miako-dori, or bird of the 
capital ! High above is a great wavering wedge of wild 
geese, from which peacefully floats down to earth a mel- 
lowed and musical chant; five or six ibis-like birds forming 
a similar wedge follow at a lower level ; a stately snow- 
white crane alights and stalks grandly about for a little, 
then spreads its broad pinions, strenuously flaps them to 
the time of the " Dead March in Saul," and, spurning the 
mud, rises into the blue ether with the dignified solemnity 
of an archangel. 




238 Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER XX. 

Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. 

Absence of Degraded Conventionalism — An Exception Proving the Rule- 
Outlines of Fuji — The Bamboo in Art — Simplicity in Composition — 
Flight of Birds — Spider's Web in Wood-work — Want of Truth in Greek 
Art — A Japanese Picture Gallery. 

f"^ O MUCH has already and so ably been written 
^^ on the subject of Japanese art, that my only 

apology for the few pages which follow is the 
hope I have of inducing a still wider circle to 
become interested in the problems it has done 
so much both to suggest and to solve. We all 
know the painful effect produced upon our 
minds when lying sick, by the wall paper 
pattern of our bed-room transforming itself 
into a series of faces. Those faces are after all 
often objective realities ; the pattern designer has 
betrayed the decadence of his art, for his fanciful designs 
are not unfrequently the descendants of earlier and higher 
attempts to portray the human face divine. Common as 
this later phase of degraded or conventional art is in most 
countries, it is hardly to be detected in Japan at all. 
The one solitary instance I have observed, at all events, is 
this bit of carving on the end of a sort of towel rack, and 
the exception tends to prove the rule, for the specimen 
was obtained by a friend from an Aino who produced it. 
I shall be happy to hear of other examples, and I suppose 




Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. 239 




240 



Nine Years in Nipon. 




Conventional Carving of a Bird's 
Head, by an A ino fron Yesso. 



there may be many. On the 
whole, the impression left on 
one is that Japanese art stri\es 
after fidelity to nature, and 
succeeds pretty well. Nature 
is complex, however, and technical skill is limited on 
many sides and must grow by stages. Art struggles to 
fix one view of nature's many-angled prism, and so it tends 
to lose another. An object viewed artistically has form, 
size, colour, light, perspective, texture, motion, and where 
life is, expression. No one medium or method can 
overtake such a task as to fix and freeze all those 
phases at once. And Japanese artists have never 
attempted to do so, but in the directions in which they 
have seriously tried to advance, there have been few 
ignoble failures. The success in regard to inanimate 
objects has been very signal and general, where geometrical 
perspective does not enter prominently. 




Ojitlines of Mo7i7it Fuji — 

I. From Miss Bird's Unbeaten Tracks ; 2. From an old Japanese 

Drawing ; 3. From a Recent Photograph. 

In the above outlines we have (i) that of the view of 
Mount Fuji, presented to her readers by Miss Bird, in 
p. 13 of the first volume of her Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 
with which, though in sight of Fuji almost daily for nine 



Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. 



241 



years, I have never seen anything in nature corresponding ; 
(2) is from an old native drawing of Fuji, giving the usual 
conventional shape ; and (3) is from a photograph taken 
recently. The two latter outlines correspond wonderfully 
well, and the graceful logarithmic curve of such volcanic 
mountains is caught in the second one, though not quite 
accurately. It is often rendered much more correctly. 

The simplicity of the means whereby in wood-engraving a 
certain end is gained is very admirable. The sketch under- 
neath has perhaps not been quite successfully reproduced, 

but when printed on 
the soft flabby paper 
of the country, the 
texture of the crimson 
coxcomb plant (Cela- 
sia cristata) is very 
wonderfully rendered 
by the simplest 
methods. It is a fa- 
vourite garden plant 
in Japan. 

I have observed 
that in Siebold's 
figure of Pimts densi- 
flora a slight mistake 
is made in regard to 
the curve of the pairs 
of needles, which is 
not shown, nor are 
they represented as of 
equal length, as they 
are in nature. On ob- 




TJie Coxcomb Plant (Celasia Cristata). 
(From a Japanese Sketch.) 



242 



Nine Years in Nipon. 



serving this, I turned at once to a Japanese drawing, and 
found the rendering to be quite correct and natural in 
that respect. 

The bamboo is one of the greatest boons to sub-tropical 
and even tropical man, and is devoted to an inconceivable 
number of uses. It is largely employed in Japanese art, 
and is capable of being turned about in all sorts of ways 
so as to yield every graceful variety of form. I had in 
my bedroom a Japanese wall paper composed of bamboo 
sprays twining and curving so as apparently never to re- 
peat themselves, and the eye never tired of it. 

Sometimes the foliage effects are produced by single 
strokes for each blade. The subjoined sketch is boldly and 




Bamboo. 



Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. 



243 



effectively brought out by swift continuous strokes, the 

pencil hardly being lifted from the paper. 

One of the greatest feats an artist can perform is to 

draw, say, a horse at the gal- 
lop, with flowing mane and 
waving tail, with one dip of his 
pencil in a given number of 
distinct strokes — the fewer the 
more wonderful the achieve- 
ment. 

Here, in another style of 
execution, is a sketch of 
the same beneficent plant. 
There is some attempt to indi- 
cate shading, and the veining 
I of the leaves is shown simply 
but quite as effectively as need 
be. The stunted twigs, the 
lines of fracture of the thick 
main stem, the varying lengths 
of the internodes, and the 
nibbled blades, are all quite 
characteristic and true to 
nature. 

Another favourite plant is 
the cherry tree, and from the 
earliest times it has figured as 
Another Sketch of Bamhoo. ^ chicf omamcnt on various 

articles of furniture. 

This is a modern specimen, by Shunzan, in his charac- 
teristic style : — 




244 



Nine Years in Nipon, 




spray of Cherry Blossom, by Shunzan. 

A style of pictorial ornament very much in favour, and 
partly founded on the floral philosophy already described, 
is illustrated in the next cut. The combination of ele- 




Fish, Fruit, and Flowers. 



Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. 245 



ments is not quite accidental. Each part in the composi- 
tion has a meaning usually in relation to the other 
elements of it, and it requires a certain amount of 
familiarity with Japanese modes of thinking and ways of 
looking at things to enter fully into the enjoyment of 
such simple and pretty designs. 

A student of ornament will find much which is worthy 
of his attention in designs even of such austere simplicity, 
and specially worthy of note is the direction of each 
dominating line in relation to associated lines, in regard 
to which Ruskin has said much, the truthful force of which 
every Japanese designer would at once feel. 

A pleasing object which often 
meets the eye in the country 
is the egret or paddy bird, of 
snowy white plumage and grace- 
ful form. The wading birds gener- 
ally are favourite themes of the 
Japanese artist, and are found in 
every form of ornamental work — 
on painted screens, fans, hanging 
scrolls, and bronzes. To the crane 
belongs special sanctity, as it is a 
well-known symbol of long life 
and constancy. 

The flight of cranes is often 
* wonderfully well portrayed, and I 
think in a manner truer to nature 
than some of the recent illustra- 
tions on the subject of the flight 
of birds. The curves in Marey's 




m8£f 



Snowy Egret. 



246 



Nine Years in Nipon. 



book are often both wrong andunartlstic, while those of 
Pettigrew are stiffly correct but ungraceful. On a folding 
screen which I had there was a great flock of cranes in 
flight, descending and in every conceivable attitude. The 
eye was closely carried down the canvas — shall I say? — 
till you felt the whirling flight make you almost giddy, 
— a genuine triumph of art. 

Here is a specimen which seems to me also to be true 
to nature and full of grace and suggestive hints of the 




Wild Goose descending 



natural environment of the subject, conveyed with ex- 
quisitely simple sincerity. 

Even in wood-work natural forms are most skilfully 
rendered subservient to the purposes of ornament, while 
nature's blunders are triumphantly made to yield an ele- 
ment of new beauty. I have seen a screen made of cane 
arranged as a spider's web. Now, I can imagine how a 
skilled British workman would grasp the conception and 
at once give us in cane a severe problem in Euclid. The 
Japanese artist does nothing of the sort. He looks at na- 
ture again and again, but he does not allow ideal forms 



Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. 247 

to dissipate its truth. This web of cane, then, was not 
rigidly geometrical, but as if broken and in process of re- 
paration by a spider (in bronze) placed near, but, of course, 
not quite in the centre. There was nothing in the least 
offensive in the design. The twin aims, beauty and utility, 
were thoroughly harmonized without any sacrifice to the 
truth of nature, and the very faults in nature's model were 
made to break in upon the hard conventionalism of a 
mere geometric form. Classic art has taught us the 
beauty and dignity of reposeful human forms, but in many 
respects it led us far astray. Art often loses in beauty 
what it loses in truthfulness. There is an old Greek 
Cameo which represents Jupiter hurling some large cigars 
at a few frightened giants, who are trying vainly to flee on 
legs composed of snakes, each governed by an indepen- 
dant cerebrum. Hence they are tumbling about in un- 
graceful and meaningless attitudes. One wheel of Jove's 
chariot is running along a celestial cable — a kind of tel- 
ferage on clouds, while the other rests on space. The 
horses are not visibly attached to it, nor are their muscles 
strained as if by the resistance of a weight. It is difficult 
to understand why they should rear and prance unless the 
snakes have frightened them — an altogether unworthy 
conception of the steeds of the mighty thunderer. The 
impression on one's mind is necessarily confused and un- 
satisfactory, and to a thoroughly modern mind vulgar and 
ridiculous. 

In the year 1882 there was a very large exhibition of 
paintings, supposed to be entirely in pure Japanese styles 
of art. I went with great interest to examine the 
pictures, which were all on the usual scrolls. One 



248 Nine Years in Nipon, 

prominent department contained very severe but pleasing 
drawings on warm chocolate with gold — in a rather Indian 
style, however — of Buddhist saints, by Hose of Kioto and 
others of the same school. They were all sold a day or 
two after the opening of the exhibition, and brought 
very high prices. There was also a good painting of 
Amida Buddha by Nakajima, and of the Goddess of 
Mercy, Kuwanon, by Akimoto. Those pictures showed 
that even in sacred art there had been change, and 
that it was still being maintained; but on the whole, it 
had the savour of " death unto death." It was impossible, 
however, to ignore evidence that western criticism of 
former productions had not been without beneficial results, 
especially in regard to drawing. 

Passing by the conventional groups of flowers in 
Chinese fashion, many of which were infinitely more 
attractive however than those which are sent over to this 
country to the curio shops, my interest was drawn towards 
pictures of a new realistic school, such as that of a group 
of pups by Hibino ; a cormora.nt, evidently studied from 
life by Furukawa ; a bear and cubs by Hara ; a heron by 
Yamamoto ; plantain leaves ; a grim skeleton overgrown 
with toad stools — powerfully drawn ; swallows sitting on 
a telegraph wire — nearly all looking one way as they are 
seen in nature ; an owl and a ragged tramp with monkey 
dressed in bright robes and surrounded by a crowd of 
village youths. The last picture showed very clearly the 
effects of the stimulus given by photography even to 
"pure antique Japanese art," in securing better drawing, 
truer shading and firmer acquaintance with the anatomy 
of expression. It, I think, was the chief popular attraction 



Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. 249 

of the exhibition, if one might judge from the pleased 
crowd which was always around it, and marked a new 
stage in the art progress of Japan, full of hopeful 
prognostication. 



250 Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

The Philosophy of Heaven and Earth in a Nut- Shell. 

Why Some Birds Fly Well and Others Badly — Guesses at Protective Imitation 
— A New Version of the Sphynx — Analogies of Nature and Man — 
Casting Away of Passion — The True Gentleman — The Eight Virtues — 
Some Wise Sayings. 

THE following translation appeared in the Chrysan- 
tJiemum some years ago. The stand-point of the 
author, Bakin is that of the Chinese sage Chwangtze, who 
lived some centuries before Christ. The Universe is an 
orderly product of Mind, and that Mind apparently is 
One. There are two great polar influences at work in all 
things, which we should term the negative and positive. 
The terms male 2,n^ female are nearly equivalent in the 
philosophies of China. It is curious to observe this 
attempt, made some seventy years ago, to give a rational 
account of protective mimicry. 

It would be easy and pleasant to make a finer transla- 
tion. I have endeavoured simply to let my readers know 
what the original author wrote. 

THE CREATOR'S POWER. 

The eggs of wild-birds are brooded over by the male as 
well as by the female, and therefore these birds have great 
power of flight, but in the case of barn-door and other 
domestic fowls only the female sits, and hence their 
power of flight, as in ducks, is limited. 



The Philosophy of Heaven and Earth. 251 

Now this fact arises from the influence of the female 
prijiciple^ and we find analogies even in the case of human 
children. Thus boys who are brought up in the midst of 
females till their sixteenth year resemble girls, and the 
result is due to the overcoming influence of the female 
principle. We find another example in the case of those 
birds and beasts which are developed in uncultivated 
mountains. They resemble herbs and trees, for the bod- 
ies of those birds are covered with feathers which corres- 
pond to the leaves of the trees ; while beasts have a 
furry covering quite analogous to grass. Fish are born 
amidst water and so their bodies are covered with wave 
like scales. Unclean things which grow out of mud in 
drains and filthy places have numerous feet because they 
devour mud (earth). Again, because birds are products 
of the male principle and have round eggs resembling 
heave^t they soar aloft. Fish are products of the female 
principle and having square eggs they bury them deeply 
in the earth. Trees and herbs grow from the earth, but 
the wood of trees yields fire ; so, too, grass becomes hot 
in summer, and again, the buds of trees and the sprouts 
of grass are alway rounded like heaven. Man receives his 
human form from Heaven and Earth, and therefore he re- 
sembles Heaven as to his head which is round, and earth 
to his feet which are square.* If in Heaven there are 
Five Elements, viz., Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and Earth, 
in man there are also the five corresponding viscera : — 



* It will be borne in mind here that the underlying thought of classic 
cosmogony is that Heaven is round and Earth flat and square, as symbolised 
by two famous altars dedicated to them, at which the Emperor of China, 
yearly offers sacrifices to the Divine Ruler. 



252 Nine Years in Nipon. 

lung, heart, liver, stomach and kidneys ; if in Heaven 
there are the five planets or stars, viz., the Fire star, the 
Water star, the Wood star, the Metal star and the Earth 
star, in man we find also the five fingers and nails ; if in 
Heaven there are the four seasons, the twelve months, 
and the three hundred and sixty days, man displays 
also the four limbs, twelve great joints and three 
hundred and sixty minor articulations ; if in Heaven there 
are the six spirits and six/?/, then in man too there are 
six viscera (the spleen here taking the place of the 
stomach and the ovaries being added as one) ; if in 
Heaven there are the five influences or spirits, Heat, Cool- 
ness, Cold, Drought, and Moisture, in man, again, there 
occur the five excretions, tears, nosedrop, sweat, saliva, 
and expectoration ; if in Heaven there shine the sun and 
moon, in man there are eye and ear; if Heaven and Earth 
rouse winds and clouds, in man too there is respiration, 
noise, song, weeping, and groaning. \_Note (by the 
Japanese author). In man five voices exist, viz., of call- 
ing, speaking, singing, weeping, and sighing.] The clouds 
are paralleled with the gall-bladder, the atmosphere 
(or ether) with the lung, wind with the liver, rain with 
the kidney, and thunder with the spleen. When Heaven 
and Earth meet and sweetly mingle, the heart is lord, 
but when the male and female principles clash there is 
the flashing of angry passion, and when the man is angry 
his voice rises. But the voice is produced by the sun, 
and is a male (i.e., positive or active) spirit or essence. 
Sometimes in Heaven frost and dews descend and so man 
also frequently perspires. Sometimes Heaven pours forth 
rain and snow and not unfrequently man sheds tears. 



The Philosophy of Heaven and Earth. 253 

Again, if in Heaven there are the constellations, in man 
we find that there are freckles ; if in Earth there is soil, in 
man there is solid tissue ; if water produces soil, blood 
evolves flesh ; if the soil produces rocks and these rocks 
give forth gold and iron, flesh too begets bones and the 
bones develop teeth and nails. If in Earth there are 
herbs and trees, in man there is the hair of the head. 
When the female and male principles are separated, 
strength and tenderness fashion the forms of all things* 
and while the troublesome or headache spirit * becomes 
crawling things, the subtle delicate spirit becomes man. 
Hence, when his body is first being framed, the trouble- 
some spirit produces abdominal parasites, teeth-worms, 
and lice, while the delicate spirit becomes his blood and 
flesh. When the good and bad spirits or influences develop 
in Heaven and Earth the sun and moon are eaten up (i.e., 
by eclipse). In man when there are the two spirits pre- 
sent diseases are generated. When water fails the soil 
becomes sterile, and so when the blood diminishes the 
flesh wears away ; or, again, if the soil dries up, plants 
and trees wither, and so, too, when the blood fails, the 
hair of the head falls of In stagnant water deposits of 
mud become heaped up into mountains, and so when the 
blood does not freely circulate the flesh becomes massed 
into tumours. If mountains contained no rocks to give 
them firmness, they would be much subject to landslips : 
and if the man had not bones he could not have a body. 
When the female principle overcomes the male principle 



Such a spirit is referred to in early writings in other lands. 



254 Nine Years in Nipon. 

frost and dews descend, but when the male principle 
asserts itself sweat pours forth (i.e., there is heat). 

These are the general facts of the case. Man is called 
the Microcosm ( = Little Heaven and Earth). Heaven 
and Earth are truly devoid of selfishness, for when spring 
comes it ic warm, when summer comes it is hot, in autumn 
it is cool, and in winter, cold, nor is there anything which 
receives not seasonable nourishment. 

It naturally flows from this that all who follow Heaven 
(i.e., God or Providence) prosper, while those who oppose 
it surely come to ruin. If any human being is of a peaceful 
disposition at his birth, he is so by reason of his heavenly 
nature. 

The activity of one who has obtained perception of any- 
thing is the passion of his nature. When an object is 
present, the pursuit of it by the soul is a movement of the 
consciousness. When consciousness and its objects come 
in contact there arises desire or dislike. Desire having 
taken form [in action ?] the consciousness passes on to 
something else ; but if one cannot return into himself the 
principles of Heaven are overthrown. This returning 
into oneself is what is called the casting away of human 
passions. If man, having an external form resembling 
Heaven and Earth, cannot bring his heart into accordance 
with these, it is because there is an exceeding of passion's 
dictates.* 

Therefore, the superior man (or the true gentleman), 
does not barter Heaven for self, but whatever external ob- 



* The idea seems to be that there is a legitimate gratification of healthy 
appetites and affections. 



The Philosophy of Heaven and Earth. 255 

jects may come into synthesis with him, he does not lose 
his true disposition, but excels in the Path. 

Those are up to the ideal standard who, ripe in religious 
erudition, bestow deeds of goodness on their fellow men. If 
it is true that sagely wisdom cannot be comprehended, it is 
no less true that Heaven and Earth cannot be grasped by 
our understandings. When ordinary men attempt to com- 
pare their ordinary attainments with the minds of the 
sages, mistakes are apt to occur. We cannot indeed see 
the whole pale sky through a narrow tube. The swallow 
cannot fathom the purposes of the taibo.\ Any one who 
knows of the purity of U may yet hate his fondness for 
the cup, who after death was recognized as the inventor 
of wine — not very becoming work for a sage to engage in, 
methinks. 

Everyone knows of the vileness of Ketsu, but neverthe- 
less his manufacturing tiles and leaving the art of making 
them behind him is recognised by everybody as a redeem- 
ing virtue in the character of an evil man. For the sage 
is one who dislikes to see fine purple replaced by common 
turkey-red ; who dislikes to hear fine singing and music 
rendered discordant by an unmelodious voice, and who 
dislikes to see men of brilliant parts overthrow their own 
house and country. It was said in the ancient times that 
man was the type of all things. Birds and beasts differ 
from him, and the difference consists in his alone possess- 
ing the eight virtues of humanity, righteousness, polite- 
ness, wisdom, loyalty, truthfulness, and filiality. 

If he forgets these eight virtues, however, he becomes 

+ A fabulous bird with wings several thousand miles in length. 



256 Nine Years in Nipon. 

still more degraded than the brutes or even the vegetable 
productions of nature. Again, even amongst the animals 
there are such rare beings as the phoenix and kirin;* 
while amongst vegetable growths there are such honour- 
able trees as the pine and the oak, and the herbs contain 
the ran and the chrysanthemum. 

Men who themselves have but a modicum of wisdom 
had better refrain from laughing at fools, for a man may 
be indeed a thorough simpleton but if he be honest withal 
he is not making the mistake of throwing his life away. 

If a man of intellect does not frequently listen to the 
opinions of others, his blunders will be many. Men hav- 
ing gifts of genius balanced by but little learning, are 
liable to have their hearts go astray. Knowledge itself is 
not really difficult ; it is the hard study required to obtain 
it which is the real difficulty. Rikusan-zan says : — 

" Purity is the most honourable thing ; not the rich but 

he who is righteous in conduct is the higher in rank. 

The vilest man is he who hears not the Path.f There is 

no one lower than he who knows no shame." And saith 

Hokoho : — 

" The ripe man is he who spreads abroad the truth of 
the Path." 

I have felt most deeply the weightiness of these sayings 
and so, too, have felt profoundly the depth of my own 
folly. 



* A mythological quadruped supposed to represent the giraffe, 

1 1 prefer to follow this rendering, leaving " way " for the teaching of 
Him who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life." 



Homes of the People. 257 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Homes of the People. 

Moated Castles in Miniature — Bird Rest or Torii — Grim Gateways— Keep- 
ing the Wolf from the Door — Primitive Stairways — Pebbled Courtyard 
— Hara-kiri^ or the " Happy Despatch " — Wells and Water — A Poet 
and the "Morning Glory" — Paper Lanterns, Pillows, etc. — Mosquito 
Nets— Rats and Cats— The End of the Home—" Fire ! " 

I SHALL endeavour in this chapter to give my readers 
as clear a conception as I can, consistently with 
extreme brevity, of the dwelling-houses of the Japanese. 
Rich and poor live side by side, although in Tokio there 
are caste traces still of the feudal age, and there are also 
growing tendencies in the rising mercantile and monied 
classes to separate themselves from the common mass. 
There are now great portions of the capital densely popu- 
lated by the working classes only, and quite destitute of 
any open spaces of practical value for health or recreation. 

I have had many opportunities of seeing the interior of 
houses tenanted by Japanese of every rank in life, and I 
shall try to describe things just as I have really seen 
them. 

The proverb, '' every Englishman's house is his castle," 
might very readily be appropriated by the Japanese, 
whose home, however humble it may be in all other 
respects, is always guarded by a moat ! In Charles 
Dickens's Great Expectations there is painted a lawyer's 
clerk of sober, severely legal disposition, who has yet a 



258 Nine Years in Nipon. 

streak of romance in his constitution, and whose humble 
residence is guarded, when office hours are over, by the 
severest military precautions approved of by novel-writers. 
Such a pathetic survival of ancient manners is well illus- 
trated by many little points about an ordinary Japanese 
dwelling. 

In a feudal mansion the moat was usually deep enough 
to prove a genuine obstacle. While it is still almost uni- 
versally retained, the muddy water is hid in summer time 
by duckweed or the broad leaves of the lotus, and from 
the long edible roots of the latter plant in some cases 
some revenue may be derived. The smaller gentry ape 
the grandeur of those a scale or two above them, and 
when at last we come down to the lowest level we still 
find a miniature moat — which is often dry — of a foot or 
so in breadth, and at most about two inches deep ! 

I have already spoken of the custom of sprinkling the 
streets with water from those dirty ditches, which in 
populous places are made to run into each other like 
drains, but very irregularly. The better class of houses 
have them lined with layers of stone, built somewhat like 
Cyclopean work, in receding layers. At the angles larger 
stones are used. The humbler habitations have their 
moats lined by thin pine boards pegged down into the 
ground. As their sides and bottoms are of course per- 
vious, and as the surface sewage all passes into them, the 
sanitary results are sometimes rather startling. 

The soil in such a neighbourhood I have found to be 
peculiarly rich in microscopic life, and the people who 
reside there are specially susceptible to cholera. Classic 
conquerors used to pass a plough over the site of a cap- 



Homes of the People. 



259 



tured city. I trust no such process will ever be performed 
over Tokio, but if it should be, I think manure might at 
least readily be dispensed with for a decade or so. 

The above account of the origin of the moat-like drains 
of common houses is that which is received by learned 
native antiquarians. It is, however, worthy of note that 
in Fiji the natives are said to build themselves a small 
house on certain occasions, and to surround it with a 
moat, believing that a little water will neutralise the 
charms which are directed against them. May the 
Japanese custom not have come down from the time when 
lake dwellings were so much used, perhaps originally — as 
illustrated in some parts of Central Africa at the present 
time — for a defence against insects of formidable kinds, 
which may now be unknown to our race ? 




Torii or Bird-rest hi front of a Shinto Temple. 



In China there is a curious superstition cdiAo.^ feng-shui 
on the basis of which the site and aspect of every house is 



26o Nine Years in Nipon. 

determined. It may possibly, as some have ingeniously 
supposed, have arisen from crude untrained observation 
of the effects of soil emanations and other agencies of 
nature on the residents of ill-chosen dwellings. You can 
find everywhere in Japan many little books for sale filled 
with engravings and minute directions how to place your 
dwelling favourably, but I cannot say that I have observed 
amongst the people any very solid evidences of the 
existence oi feng-sJmi as a current belief 

Approaching the gate we are awed by a massive 
arrangement of black wood, reminding one of a hideous 
sable structure we saw many years ago, on a very 
memorable dull grey morning, in front of a Scottish jail. 
Its form in some cases approaches that of the so-called 
" bird-rest " in front of Japanese temples.* 

The wall or fence may consist of bamboos, whole or 
split, or of thin wooden planks blackened with a mixture of 
Indian ink and the juice of the unripe persimmon, which 
is highly bitter, astringent and antiseptic, preserving the 
wood for a long time. 

In houses of some pretensions there is an embankment 
behind the moat, topped by a quick-set hedge of either 
holly, privet, camellia or the like. Behind this there is 
either the fence already described, or a wall composed of 
thin tiles laid horizontally, with much white shell lime ; or 
a bamboo lath and plaster wall, sometimes covered by 
diamond-shaped tiles, the joining lines of which are 



* In some archaeological drawings in my possession, very ancient native 
pictures of such structures are shown, and above them are two birds some- 
thing like pigeons, poised in the attitude of those usually painted in the 
familiar old Chinese willow-pattern plate. 



Homes of the People. 261 

concealed by diagonals of white lime laid on smoothly, 
rounded and as thick as three fingers. This has a very 
pleasing appearance, quite characteristic of Japanese 
architecture. I have seen such a wall crowned by a line 
of old bayonets, forming a picturesque and rather 
formidable cheval de frise. 

As the name of the street is not to be found at the 
street corner as with us, it is repeated on every door-way. 
The towns are divided into wards and blocks, and the 
numbers of the houses are often confused and misleading. 
A slip of white wood is nailed on one of the posts of the 
gate, and is inscribed with the name of the street or 
block, the number, name of householder, numbers and 
sexes of household. Besides this combined street-sign 
and door-plate there is often a charm to keep away the 
wolf from the door, an animal which literally, in times not 
very remote, was known in the vicinity of Tokio, and was 
greatly dreaded. Yellow placards are put up when there 
is any plague or infectious disease there, such as cholera. 
Within the porch there are racks for halberts, and other 
grotesque instruments of formidable shapes, which we 
might call " clutches," such as the ever vigilant gate- 
keepers might find useful when aiding the apprehension of 
brawlers, beggars, or unruly partizans. The halberts 
and other weapons have been removed, but the 
racks still remain to attest the existence of rougher, 
ruder times, but recently passed away. Just outside 
the outer gateway posts are inserted in the ground 
wherewith to support the tall flag-staffs used at 
festivals, and sometimes other smaller ones for the cords 
on which lanterns are hung during illuminations. These 



262 Nme Years in Nipon, 

costly rejoicings are exceedingly frequent, and though 
pleasing to visitors are a heavy burden to householders, 
and a constant theme for grumbling. 

The gates of the larger houses are heavy, are adorned 
with verdant copper or bronze mountings, and often 
studded with large nails. 

When you enter by the gate you generally find a court 
from several sides of which the open verandahs of the 
building are approachable. The verandahs are high, and 
there is a special entrance by heavy wooden stairs. In 
some temples you often find that those stairs are com- 
posed of great tree trunks placed at an angle of about 
forty-five degrees, in which the steps are carefully notched. 
I have seen precisely the same kind of work in the Him- 
alayas, but in a much coarser style of carpentry, and as the 
same construction is shown, I think, in a Greek caricature 
of the Delphic oracle, this may perhaps represent an early 
form of our familiar wooden stair. The court is some- 
times paved with large water-worn stones, larger than the 
Qi^^ of a goose ; sometimes it is of level, weedless, per- 
fectly well swept earth ; and in either case there are lines 
of smooth stepping stones where they may be required. 
There is not the same horror of publicity as in India — not 
by any means, but usually the court or garden is very well 
fenced in, either by wooden walls or a well trimmed 
hedge. A garden in Japan is never laid out in flower 
plots like the approved carpet patterns of the Italian 
school. Sometimes flowering plants are purposely allowed 
to grow in sweet confusion, but the ground is chiefly taken 
up with close cropped, bristly turf — which turns rather 
yellow in winter — and carefully trimmed trees, often 



Homes of the People. 263 

dwarfed and trained with more skill than eye for beauty. 

I have already alluded to the miniature landscape gar- 
dening, in which the Japanese so greatly excel, and need 
add little more here on that subject. One great aim is to 
secure an idealised, flawless woodland effect in a small 
space, and every ton of sheer rubbish and fragment of 
shapeless stone can be prettily turned to account. 

In the grander mansions there is a space which in 
olden times used to be strewn on certain awful occa- 
sions with white sand. When a member of a knightly 
family had been found guilty of a serious offence, 
he had, sitting there, to bare his abdomen, and taking 
the smallest of the two swords which every samurai 
carried, plunge it into his belly and carry it across. 
Usually in later times a mere skin scratch sufficed, 
and whenever this act had been formally done, a relative, 
who stood behind the unfortunate knight, and who had 
probably been chosen as an expert swordsman, severed 
the head from the body by a swift stroke with a weapon 
edged like a razor. Thus was honour maintained and 
justice satisfied. 

Miss Bird is unfortunately quite wrong in supposing 
that hara-kiri (not hari-kari^ as our newspapers persist in 
styling it), is entirely extinct, though indeed it is becoming 
rarer every year, and science has introduced the Japanese 
to much more elegant ways of " working one's self off." 

The gardens even of somewhat humble mansions are 
often graced with carved stone lanterns. The well, 
placed near the kitchen, is surrounded with a platform of 
green and slippery planks ; it often has a rim of stone 
around it, and the bucket is raised by a beam with a 



264 * Nine Years in Nipon. 

stone attached to one end, like the Egyptian shadoof, or 
by means of a rough rope working on a large pulley. 
Sometimes it is simply attached to the end of a long 
bamboo like a fishing rod. A Japanese poet prettily and 
wittily sings of the " morning-face " — their name for the 
convolvolus or morning-glory — which he sees at break of 
every day twining its fair arms afresh round the well- 
rope ; and Japanese painters love to picture graceful girls 
engaged in drawing water. At the well, too, many a sad 
history ends. A love-sick maiden often fills her wide 
sleeves with stones, and sinks to what is hoped may be 
rest. In Tokio there is a full supply of fine clear water, 
but during a great cholera epidemic I discovered, and, I 
think, demonstrated, that the method of distribution is 
such that the mains become necessarily more and more 
polluted as the water nears its outlet in the bay, and I 
suspect that the mortality keeps very close pace with the 
increasing impurity of the water supply. Nothing is so 
urgently needed in Tokio as reform in this direction. 

The roof is of black tiles made out of a clay, dark with 
organic matter, which is obtained from the bottoms of 
old canals foul with putrid sewage. Sometimes in the 
poorer houses, and in the outhouses of the greater ones, 
wooden shingles only are used, and very frequent pro- 
clamations are issued forbidding their use, on account of 
the danger of fire, but without much effect. Under the 
eaves, and even within the house, which is quite open in 
warm weather, swallows build their nests within easy 
range of the hands of the residents. 

In front of the doorway there is a small space unfloored, 
called the dorna^ where you take off your shoes after 



Homes of the People. 



265 



announcing yourself in the words, O tanomi mosu — " I 
beseech you " ! or by banging a gong suspended by the 
door-posts. Looking above, you are struck with the 
ponderous size of the beams that support the roof, and 
you are perhaps not quite prepared to accept the reason 
given — the desire to avert the evil consequences of earth- 
quakes ! The walls are hung with 
paper lanterns, and there is a 
range of white wooden fire- 
buckets all stamped with the 
crest of the owner. Some of the 
lanterns are quite cylindrical, open 
out like a concertina, are sus- 
pended from a p shaped stick, 
and are like those used in ancient 
Egypt. A favourite form of 

Pape7 Lantern Used by Pedestrians , ^ . , , 

at Night. lantern tor carrymg about the 

streets at night — and in Tokio every one must carry a 
lantern lighted even on moonlight nights* — is that shown 
in the cut. The crest or cognisance of the owner is 
generally painted outside in large dimensions. 

There is often only one storey in Japanese houses, and 
very rarely more than two. The stair to the second 
storey is very steep. The ceilings are composed of very 
thin broad planks, and are lower than we are accustomed 
to, but it must be remembered that the people do not 




* The students of Tokio having once been reminded by their proctors — 
shall I say ? — of this regulation, did purchase, and, in conformity with its 
terms, carry about " a lantern " of colossal dimensions, to the disgust of all 
legal-minded persons and pedants. 

R 



266 Nine Years in Nipon. 

sit on chairs, and have no high beds or tables. 
Doorways, or rather the grooved lintels in which the 
screen-doors slide, are very low, and the Japanese, 
who are always bowing for some reason or another, 
seem to enjoy having an unusual number of them 
to pass through in extensive houses. No room is 
completely walled in, but opens on two or more sides 
completely into the garden, the street, or the adjoining 
rooms, so that eavesdroppers do not need to hide behind 
the dear old arras. Sliding shutters, with tissue paper 
windows, the carpentry of which is careful and exact, 
move in wooden grooves almost on a level with the floor, 
which is covered with padded woven mats of rushes. 
Those mats are of uniform size, six feet by three, and 
this fact dominates all architecture in Japan. Estimates 
for building houses, and the cutting of wood, rest upon 
this traditional custom. 

As a protection against the severities of the weather, 
rain-shutters are also used, which are slid into a box-like 
recess with alarming noise early in the morning. The 
floor underneath the mats is like the wood of which 
band-boxes are made, and I have had the experience, 
once more common in Japan than it now is, of a robber 
moving underneath the floor and noisily seeking an 
entrance. 

In a recess is rolled up the soft cotton-stuffed mat- 
tresses which constitute beds in Japan, while alongside 
are placed the wooden paper-padded pillows. Sometimes 
each one contains a little drawer in which to put a lady's 
jewelled hair-pins. I never knew a "foreigner" who 
cared to dislocate his neck by using them. This form of 




Ho7nes of the People. 267 

head-rest may perhaps have arisen in connection with 
the elaborate and costly hair-dressing 
common in some of the Pacific isles, but 
a pillow of similar shape was used in 
ancient Egypt, and the one used by 
the late King Cetewayo, as figured in 
the illustrated London papers, was also 
similar in design. 

In the walls are recesses with sliding doors, into which 
the bedding is thrust in the day-time. Clothes are kept 
in plaited bamboo boxes usually covered with black or 
dark-green waterproof paper. The furniture is very 
simple ; there are often in the best houses no chairs, no 
stools, no tables, no bedsteads. There may be some low 
short-legged side-tables of characteristic Japanese pattern, 
and one or two costly vases or other ornaments, a few 
scroll pictures which are changed in deference to guests 
and seasons, some flowers or dwarf trees in vases, and a 
lamp or two. Often you may now find in one room of the 
house a good and costly western carpet, some chairs, a 
table, a photographic album, and a copy of one or other 
of Herbert Spencer's works — two-thirds of which is 
probably uncut. 

In one part of the house is the altar-shelf on which 
images of saints or sages or pictures of ancestors may be 
seen, with incense tapers burning before them by day and 
lamps at night. I have often seen photographs of the 
dead honoured in this idolatrous way. 

I must not forget to mention the dark closet for 
naughty children — the severest punishment usually re- 
sorted to in Japan. 



268 Ni7ie Years in Nipon. 

As mosquitoes are exceedingly troublesome in summer 
on the plains, curtains of a dark green hemp are placed 
above the sleepers at night and over the baby's cot in day- 
time to exclude them. They are smoked out at sundown 
by the burning of a kind of scented grass. On the 8th 
day of the fourth month portions of the same herb are 
also hung up within the paper lanterns to act as a charm 
against those most irritating bloodsuckers. 

According to the scholarly Mr. Satow, peasants place 
bundles of the dried stems of tobacco in the space between 
the walls of their cottages and the eaves, to keep out rats 
and mice, which are very troublesome. The stoats also 
tend to keep them down greatly, and great is the noise of 
scurrying and screaming behind the thin wainscot when 
one of those pugnacious animals makes an entrance at 
midnight. Cats are kept for the same purpose. They 
are very fond of fish, do not seem to care much for cow's 
milk, and have a curious short, stunted, and deformed tail. 
It is supposed by many foreigners that the short tails are 
due to the Japanese practice of cutting them off. The 
fact is the majority of Japanese cats are born with this 
deformity, and it is often so ungraceful that the practice 
of cutting off what remains is certainly quite common. 
When English cats were brought into the country many 
years ago, their long tails were greatly admired, and it is 
almost impossible to retain a long-tailed cat many days, 
so eagerly are they sought after. 

At the New- Year, when all debts are paid and a new 
life begins, every corner of the house is gone over, the 
mats are raised, the furniture washed and polished, and 
the cobwebs swept away. 



Homes of the People. 269 

I need hardly describe the outhouses in detail. In 
large mansions there is usually a partially matted fen- 
cing room, in which all kinds of juvenile racket and mis- 
chief are carried on, without danger of injury to furni- 
ture or person. The poorer classes indulge in the public 
hot baths very frequently, and the dressing room is 
the nightly resort of neighbouring gossips. The sexes 
still bathe in common in many parts of Japan, and in 
spite of many efforts on the part of government, indecent 
publicity is by no means rare. 

In summer, a well planned Japanese house is the very 
ideal of coolness, grace and comfort. In winter it is the 
acme of misery. There are no fire-places, and there is 
unmitigated ventilation. People keep themselves warm 
by holding their palms over some morsels of red hot char- 
coal in a brazier, and frost-bite is very common. No one 
goes out if he can at all help it in wet or very cold 
weather. At night, when cold dry v/inds blow, a heating 
apparatus is put beneath the heavy cotton coverlets. It 
often gets overturned ; a watchman from his ladder-like 
tower sees afar-off a dull red glow, a bell suddenly clangs, 
another, and then another, and soon the vast city is in an 
uproar, friends rushing madly to congratulate or commis- 
erate, or help ; poor householders careering along with 
their lares and penates, and a few mats ; and here and 
there firemen bearing along ghastly shapeless charred 
burdens which move and groan. The roar of the ruddy 
rapidly onrushing waves of flame, the crackle of dry wood 
and the loud pistol like " pop " of hollow bamboos filled 
with heated air, tend quite to unnerve the coolest 
person. In a few hours a great fan-shaped gap, as the 



2/0 Ni7ie Years in Nipo7t, 

morning papers show in red-coloured maps, has appeared 
in the city. You go at day-break to find the scene of 
horror, but it has already almost disappeared. New sign- 
boards are erected intimating that the premises will be 
reopened, etc., in a day or two. Crowds of carpenters 
have rushed in from outlying suburbs and far away 
villages, and have already done much to re-erect on the 
hot and smoking ruins wooden houses nearly as good as 
those last night's fire and fury swept away. 



Hozv the Japanese Amuse Themselves. 271 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

How the Japanese Amuse Themselves. 

Artistic Toys-Cheapness, a Hygienic Advantage-Gardening in Miniature 
-Archaisms of the Toy World-Tough Picture-Books-Early Kinder 
Gartens-Dumb Oratory-Puppet Shows and the Drama-Wrestlers 
and their Rewards. 

MY FIRST impression on seeing the Japanese face 
to face, in their everyday garb, was that they 
were a people exceedingly earnest as to the routine duties 
of life, sober-minded, good-natured, and ever ready for a 
laugh at any trifle, but just on that account not requiring 
and not seeking for any great amount of artificial 

amusement. 

Well, I was not quite right then, and may even be 
wrong now ; my more experienced judgment may still 
require correction ; but I do now most assuredly think 
that a very large amount of time, and an excessive 
amount of money is devoted to amusements of an 
exciting kind, and that in this respect the Japanese have 
perhaps gone somewhat beyond most other modern races. 
Japanese children have always had a great variety of toys 
to choose from ; and now, when our own highly civilised 
nations are not slow to adopt the happy thoughts of the 
Far East, many would be astonished to find how very 
rapidly western ideas are appreciated and imitated by 
eastern toy-makers. I remember once of pointing out to 
a passing tourist a new and very ingenious toy which was 



2/2 Nine Years in Nipon. 

selling at every corner in Tokio, and seemed to be 
thoroughly Japanese alike in conception and construction. 
He rather astonished me by saying that the same toy had 
really appeared in Paris twelve months before as a new 
invention and, sure enough, the Japanese had borrowed it 
from the West. 

The artistic breadth and firmness of purpose we. now 
tend to associate with Japanese ornamental work of all 
kinds, is fully displayed in the toy department, as may be 
witnessed on the occasion of any Buddhist saint-day. 
With a bit of common clay or coarse papier mache deftly 
daubed with paint, an object will be fashioned, pleasing 
enough for any child to play with, and artistically far 
beyond what the same money would be able to purchase 
in any of our own village fairs. 

On returning to Europe I have been much struck, how- 
ever, with the wonderful improvement the last decade has 
effected on our European cheaper toys and picture-books, 
both as regards taste and ingenuity. The cheaper /<2/2'^r 
mache ones of Japan, proverbial as they are amongst 
native authors for their frailty and transitoriness, have a 
special hygienic value, as I often found when attending 
little fever patients. A copper or two — in Japan they 
even condescend to iron — would buy a hatful of them in 
variety enough to fill the little sick one's heart to over- 
flowing with happiness, and you felt no compunction in 
speedily consigning their ruins to the fire. 

A very simple and charming toy of which my little 
patients did not readily tire, consisted of a neat little box 
of white wood containing many kinds of fish in coloured 
porcelain, all very wonderfully like nature, fresh and 



How the Japanes'e Amuse Themselves. 273 

lively looking. Each had a tiny ring in its mouth, and 
there was supplied to the young angler a little fishing-rod 
armed with a hook, with which he would dexterously 
whip out a finny captive from the transparent depths of a 
tea cup. I think each of those boxes cost about three- 
farthings sterling to a foreign retail purchaser. For how 
much less a smart Japanese small boy could purchase one 
is still a mystery which no foreigner is ever likely to 
fathom. 

I have already alluded to the mud-pie instinct. In 
Japan it is diligently fostered and guided as it ought 
to be. There are always certain shelves in the toy-shop 
of the poorest hamlet devoted to what might perhaps be 
called the "properties" requisite for miniature mud-pie 
gardens. There are little terra-cotta bridges, rustic 
bowers, huts, trees, storks, oxen, and cattle ; and the chil- 
dren learn to range them with a good eye to landscape 
effects. I think I should like to endow a professorship of 
this infantile art, which has perhaps done as much to 
promote aesthetic culture in Japan as all other means put 
together. I should be told, of course, that the instinct is 
there already. Very true, but according to modern 
teaching, not quite Darwinian, perhaps, instincts can be 
quickly created when they are wished for very much. 

Did you ever notice the frequent archaisms in the 
world of toymakers ? Not long ago the soldiers in the 
realm of toys were dressed in armour. They are still 
usually clad in uniform a few decades old. No such loco- 
motives are seen in active service as the toymakers con- 
tinue to supply. The same thing is true of Japan. You 



274 Nme Years in Nip on. 

find the old world of pre-Restoratlon days perpetuated 
for the children. 

There is also what city men would call "a strong line" 
in picture-books. I do not intend to speak here of those 
that are educational in their tendency. Well-drawn but 
too gaudily coloured sheets of object-lessons in endless 
variety are to be seen on every bookseller's shop-front — 
windows are only a recent innovation. I have in my 
possession many most useful productions of this kind, 
showing the various cereals, vegetables, etc., which have 
been issued at somewhere about one farthing each, and 
they seem to be exceedingly popular with the little folks. 
A finer style of work contains very excellent and well- 
selected drawing lessons for home study and amusement. 
And here I may state that the old friend of our infancy, 
the transparent slate, has found in Japan alert imitators 
and a ready sale. 

The low-priced picture story-books remind one very 
much of those common in this country some thirty odd 
years ago ; but in Japan they are usually printed from 
blocks with four or five colours. In the better class of 
books the effect of colour in drapery, armour, plumage, 
etc., is often very prettily heightened by a simple em- 
bossing process which indicates texture effectively, and 
does not seem to add very much to the expense of pro- 
duction. A thick and, in ordinary circumstances, inde- 
structible paper is used for such works. I believe it 
would be useful in this country for a similar class of 
picture-books for children, and I sincerely trust some 
enterprising publisher will try the experiment. 

Bakin, a Japanese writer already quoted, says that from 



How the Japanese Amuse Themselves. 275 

olden times there were many games which brought out the 
faculties of young children, and he commends especially 
such amusements as scene guessing, in which cards con- 
taining pictures have to be correctly named. Another 
game is the pairing of clam shells, which keeps little eyes 
and fingers well and quietly employed for a long time. 
His remarks show that he had fairly grasped the princi- 
ples of the Kinder-garten so far back as seventy years ago. 

The dressing of dolls is a great pastime for girls, and 
much money is spent on them. A game which is very 
popular is for one to imitate by set signs some object, 
animal or person, on which his opponent must promptly 
simulate something more powerful and so outwit him or 
lose the game. At wine parties, with drinking as the 
forfeit, the fox, gun and master are set forth by signs in 
this way. It is a silly affair altogether. The ancient 
Italian game of moro is one which is common also in 
Japan — so many fingers are briefly and quickly displayed 
and must be counted correctly. A good deal too much 
strong rice-beer is absorbed on those occasions. The same 
game is very much played also in China, as I have ob- 
served on two occasions when passing through Hong- 
Kong, the shrill quick cry and answer of players being 
very noticeable. There are multitudes of home amuse- 
ments which I cannot here find space to dwell upon as I 
should have liked to do. 

During the New- Year holidays the streets are always 
gay with bright dressed parties of young people of both 
sexes, playing at battledore and shuttlecock, or bounc- 
ing pith balls. I have already spoken of kite-flying, 
which is almost a fine art. Hand balls are used greatly, 



276 Nine Years in Nipon. 

but football is unknown, and athletic exercise is chiefly 
found in the fencing saloons, which are very greatly pat- 
ronised at all times, but especially when political feeling 
runs high. 

The story-tellers are a great attraction to people on the 
streets who have nothing special to do, and many of them 
are really accomplished elocutionists. They blow loudly 
through conch shells at certain passages, and utilize the 
fan in a thousand ways to aid their action and emphasize 
their oratory. They are entering now a new field, and in- 
dulge in political tirades, somewhat thinly veiled. 

One of the most curious feats I have seen in public 
— speaking, shall I say ? — is w^hat may be called dumb 
oratory. The story is acted on the streets in pantomime, 
and without any adventitious aid from beginning to end, 
but it is astonishing how quickly the audience responds 
by smiles or even in rare cases by tears, revealing a new 
phase of the eloquence of silence. 

Foremost of the public recreations, of course, is the 
theatre. The Chinese drama, which like our own began 
with marionette shows, and from which that of Japan 
springs, is supposed to have begun in the period of the 
Han dynasty (B.C. 200 — A.D. 200) in a very strange way. 
The story, as told by Mr. Giles in his charming and 
scholarly Historic China and Other Sketches, was this : — 
The imperial founder of the Hans had been attacked by 
the Huns, and closely shut up in one of his own cities. 
" His Majesty, acting under the advice of a crafty minis- 
ter, sent a messenger to the Hun chieftain, and offered 
him the present of a very beautiful girl on condition of 
being allowed to pass unharmed through his lines. The 



How the Japanese Amuse Themselves. 277 

Hun chieftain, suspicious of treachery, repaired by agree- 
ment to the foot of the city wall, and there beheld a 
charming young lady moving about among a circle of 
attendants almost as lovely as herself His suspicions 
being thus allayed, he gave orders to open a passage to 
the Emperor and his suite, who promptly made the best 
of their way out. At the same time, the Hun chieftain 
entered the city and proceeded to the spot on the wall 
where the young lady was awaiting him, still surrounded 
by her bevy of handmaids ; but on arriving there, he 
found, to his infinite chagrin, that the beauty and her at- 
tendants were simply a set of wooden puppets which had 
been dressed up for the occasion, and were worked by a 
concealed arrangement of strings. Overcome with rage 
and mortification, he instantly started 
in pursuit of the flying Emperor, who, 
however, succeeded in making good his 
escape " — having, of course, no Manchu- 
rian pig-tail, like poor Commissioner 
Yeh in after years. 

From that time till the present day 
marionette exhibitions have been as 
popular in China as in Italy, where they 
seem to have amused Charles Dickens 
intensely. 

In China people of public spirit pro- 
A Character Dance. ^^\^Q the entertainment for the village 

{From ail aiicieii t J apanese 

Engraving.-) communlty, and the show, like that of 

our own venerable " Punch and Judy," is set forth in the 

open air. 

Restrictions are placed in China on the representation 




2/8 Nine Years in Nipon. 

of royal characters or great public officers, even of the re- 
mote past; but there Is no intention, the law declares, "to 
prohibit the exhibition upon the stage of fictitious charac- 
ters of just and upright men, of chaste wives, and pious 
and obedient children, all which may tend to dispose the 
minds of the spectators to the practice of virtue." 

The introduction of the drama proper into Japan was 
very late. The first public performances are said to have 
taken place in Kioto, the old inland capital, in the year 
A.D. 1467-8. Very much earlier than this certain religious 
mummeries were performed. Instead of having a stage, 
those performances took place under a shed on a carpet 
of grass, and so the Japanese word for theatre is still 
Shibaya, or turf-house. 

I do not think that the sacred Shinto dances are in any 
way related to the drama, although some dramatic ele- 
ments may have accidentally become mingled with them, 
and " character dances " date almost from the beginning 
of history in Japan. 

The Japanese theatre is open from very early in the 
morning and lasts till six in the evening. The introduc- 
tion of gas has favoured night performances of late. It is 
of interest to remember that in Shakespeare's time the 
theatre was open from i to 5 P.M. Women players are 
hardly known in Japan, except as special companies act- 
ing by themselves, and their grade is esteemed much 
lower. I have never been in a Japanese theatre during a 
play, but am familiar with many of the favourite pieces 
performed in Tokio as literature, and their tone is much 
higher than I had expected — a perfect contrast to those 



How the Japanese Amuse Themselves. 279 

of India, and probably above that of some recent plays 
which have been immensely run after in England. 

Wrestling seems to have a great fascination for the 
Japanese, and nothing is so common as for spectators, in 
a rapture of excitement, to throw off their own garments, 
layer by layer, to a favourite combatant, and, if the cari- 
caturists may be trusted, to seize those of their neighbours 
also without saying by your leave ! 




28o Nine Years in Nipon. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Japanese Manners and Customs — Negative and Positive, 
Degraded Religions — Origin of some Fetishes — Superstitious Customs. 

I AM becoming more and more convinced that a great 
many of our familiar everyday customs, such as 
fashions in dress, etc., are derived from what are usually 
called superstitions, and that these, in turn, are quite com- 
monly degraded survivals of once high religious thoughts 
and emotions. Once, for example, I was told of a stone 
in Japan which changed its colour when a thunderstorm 
was impending, and, on going to see it, I found that it 
was archseologically and historically simply a Buddha of 
great antiquity, the features and limbs of which had long 
since been " weathered " away. And such I have often 
found to be the history of so-called fetish development. 
It is not for me to assert that all fetishes are of this 
description. Possibly some of them may have been 
aerolites in reality, or have been mistaken for such, and 
perhaps the descent from heaven of such a stone as the 
Kaaba at Mecca, may have really given the first concep- 
tion of a fetish to star worshippers in the old times. 
However that may be, I myself have never seen a 
" fetish " which did not clearly point to a past and higher 
faith. I once pointed out to the Asiatic Society of Japan 
a curious example of this. Some larvae, like those of the 
caddis worm, make little cases of large sand grains, which 



Japanese Manners and Customs. 281 

resemble the human form as rendered by Buddhist 
sculptors. Those are collected, named after certain 
divinities, and worshipped. A pre-existing belief has 
been attached to them ; they did not give origin to it. 

And so I have found it to be with many customs that 
seem at first sight in no way related to thought or to the 
reality of life's conditions. They are often the clear 
results of mental activity frozen into unthinking habit or 
fossils of burning religious ideas evolved and quickened 
under conditions long since passed away. Many of those 
survivals are quite unconscious and unintentional. Ac- 
cording to a London interviewer, even Mr. Spurgeon has 
a great horse-shoe over his stable door ! 

My limits strictly forbid my entering here upon the 
religions of Japan, without a study of which I think no 
adequate account of the customs of the country can be 
given. 

It may interest not a few readers, however, who seek 
for early affinities to other races, to learn that in the 
earliest faith of the people of Nipon there was a great 
primal trinity of spirits or gods, from whom all things 
flowed. The first of these is called Lord of the Centre of 
the Heavens and Earth. The progenitors of the Japanese 
race are named Izanami and Izanagi. 

Here are a few superstitious customs which may have 
arisen by the process of degradation, although the process 
cannot at present be definitely shown. 

Certain priests of Japan exorcise by cutting imaginary 
letters in the air with sword-blades. The figures are very 
greatly modified Sanskrit letters, and the rites came 
through China, probably through the influence of Taouism, 

s 



282 



Nine Yeai^s in Nipon. 




IZANAMI AND IZANAGI, 

The Progenitors of the Japanese Race. 



(By a Japanese Artist.) 



Japanese Manners and Cnstoins. 283 

which, although usually deemed a Chinese faith, is really, 
I believe, a heresy from Buddhism which came from 
India. It was easier to cut bad Sanskrit letters in the 
air than to read the language or to master its grand 
philosophy. 

When children in some parts of England are ill with 
whooping-cough, they are sometimes passed through the 
fork of a tree. Herbert Spencer thinks this custom to be 
a survival of tree-worship. In Tokio, children solemnise 
a promise or bargain, especially at the New Year, by 
applying a pine branch to the foreheads of the contracting 
parties. Sometimes, also, they seek out a tree with a 
narrow crevice, anoint the place with some oil, and make 
a vow in language now unintelligible to most people. 
Should one of them break the promise, he is bound to go 
through the hole, which, of course, is impossible. This 
custom I have not found to exist in the country north of 
Tokio. 

Miss Bird, in her Unbeaten Tracks, speaking of the 
superstitions of northern Japan, says — " If a stalk of tea 
falls into the teacup and stands upright for a second, a 
visitor is expected from the direction in which it falls." 
I have never heard of this custom, and it seems to be 
quite unknown about the neighbourhood of the capital. 
It is a very common thing in Scotland to hear people 
joking about "visitors" in their teacups in this way, and 
possibly the idea may have been imported along with tea 
from China by our sailors or merchants. 

Holly, along with Japanese sardines, is hung above the 
door at New Year time to protect the dwellers from 
demons. When the Duke of Edinburgh paid a visit to 



IK. ^ 



284 Nine Years in Nipon. 

Japan, the evil spirits were carefully and solemnly exor- 
cised from the " Palace on the Strand " which was ap- 
pointed for his residence. Of course, the officials meant 
it only for a mark of care and respect, and were no doubt 
greatly amused as they wxnt through the process. 

I come now to deal with the family life in relation to 
customs. There are, strictly speaking, no castes in Japan 
in the Indian sense. Still it is clear to my own mind 
that when Buddhism came it brought with it reminiscences, 
o to speak, of the four great castes and of the outcasts, 
which are themselves a caste, of India. Hence we have 
in Japan the old distinctions still living in the popular 
imagination, and there are Knights, Farmers, Workmen, 
and Shopkeepers, and till lately an outcast race, the 
Yelas, who acted as executioners, curriers, and the like, 
where the taking away of life, a Buddhist crime, was con- 
cerned. 

The names of the people help to mark the distinction. 
The merchants or citizen-shopkeepers are rising rapidly 
in their social status since the Restoration has broken the 
feudal system and given them security for the fruits of 
their skill and industry. 

I cannot here enter fully into details, but will mention 
briefly the leading facts in an average individual life. 

From birth the navel-cord is carefully preserved. It 
is placed in the amulet-bag worn with other relics. Dur- 
ing infancy the hair is completely shaved away, which 
has hygienic advantages ; it is afterwards allowed to grow 
in a ring, like figure 2, then as in figure i, and finally 
as in figure 3 (p. 285). Some examples of the mode 
of dressing the hair of women occur in the earlier illustra- 



Japanese Manners and Customs. 



285 



tions of this work. Children are suckled much longer 
than with us, and often they are not weaned till the 
fourth year. Coloured rice and beans are presented on 
the hundredth day after the child is born. Tattooing is 
very common, but I cannot find evidence that it was 




customary amongst the early Japanese. I have seen 
some magnificent examples of the art, and showed a 
living specimen in the Japanese Asiatic Society which 
has perhaps never been equalled. With the exception of 
the face and extremities, every portion of the body was 
covered with a beautiful damask-like design in three 
colours, so fine that the punctures had blended perfectly, 
leaving no space uncoloured. It cost a great sum of 
money and a lifetime of pain. 

Japanese married women blacken their teeth — to make 
them unattractive, some say. Really, however, the women 
have only conserved a custom common to both sexes in 
ancient times. 



286 Nine Years in Nip on. 

The usual Japanese robe is loose like a dressing-gown, 
folding over in front, and fastened by a girdle. It is open 
at the neck. The sleeves are wide and are used as pockets. 
The Japanese, therefore, naturally girds his loins and 
tucks up his sleeves when about to put forth energy. In 
place of handkerchiefs, paper is used, and is hid in the 
sleeves. The sleeves are used to hide the mouth when 
laughing, to wipe tearful eyes, and when life is too 
burdensome they are filled with stones while the wearer 
seeks a watery grave. I have already described the clogs, 

sandals, and pattens in common 
use. Hats are not much worn 
by the better class in ordinary 
weather. The above is a com- 
cane Hat. "10^ form, but there are many 

varieties, and felt hats are now greatly worn. 

Woollen underclothing and knitted scarfs bid fair to 
become of universal necessity in winter, and as sheep 
cannot be got to thrive there would seem to be promise 
of a growing trade in such materials. 

Marriage is usually arranged by consultation with the 
relatives, but love affairs of a spontaneous kind form a 
large element in the romance literature of Japan. There 
is an old pine tree in Tokio where betrothals are wont to 
be made. After the relatives have formally agreed, pre- 
sents are made publicly, and then, as in China, certain 
symbolic acts of eating and drinking are gone through, 
after which domestic duties begin. The wife owes filial 
allegiance of a very severe kind to the mother-in-law. 
Occasionally, as in India — and in certain high strata of 




Japanese Manners and Customs. 



287 



English society— children are appointed by the relatives 
from birth to marry each other. 

According to a correspondent of the Japan Gazette 
(April 3, 1878), if a woman is unfaithful to her husband 
she is made to stand before the house with her arms tied 
in front of her and her head shaven, while an inscribed 




Japanese Mangling. 



board is;hung around her neck. As I have never seen an 
example of this custom in my daily duties, which have 
carried me everywhere, either the custom must be nearly 
obsolete or domestic felicity is very general. 

To enter upon the consideration of burial ceremonies 
would imply some study of Buddhism, which I must 
reserve for another work. Both incremation and inhuma- 
tion are practised in Japan. 

Japanese faith in immortality has survived the long 



288 



Nine Years in Nipon. 



continuance of a Buddhist teaching which seems to many 
to deny it. 

A native paper published in Osaka, in April of 1878, 
relates the following incident : — " Inouye of this city has 
made a life-size figure of a daughter of his who died. 
The friends of the family were feasted some days ago on 
the occasion of the image being completed. It is now 
always attended by two maid-servants, and in a few days 
it is to be taken to the Shinto ' Cherry Temple ' to see 
the blossoms." 




A St2idious and Djitiful Girl SJiMnpooing her Rheumatic Father. 
{From a Japanese Story-Book. 

When a believer of the Monto sect dies, a copper is 
put in the coffin to pay " Granny of the River of Death," 
just as the Greeks paid for old Charon's services to their 
departed. 



Japanese Manners and Customs. 289 

The Japanese do not buy their own coffin-boards and 
store them in their drawing-rooms as the Chinese do, but 
they used to retain the dead in their own dwellings for a 
long time— a custom which is happily being given up. 
The dead are buried in cemeteries, as with us, and are 
not scattered about the country singly as in China— a 
fact of great practical significance in relation to railways 

in Japan. 

The Japanese are as fond of proverbs and pithy sayings 
as we are, and some of them are very happy hits in the 
original, though translation weakens them. Not a few of 
the proverbs which have been noted by writers as current 
in Japan are of very recent introduction into that country, 
and the process of absorption of such racy and memorable 
condensations of Western thought and experience is still 
going on. Some few of those which follow may be 
traced to other lands, but they are sufficiently well- 
known throughout the country to be esteemed Japanese 
proverbs. 

The Japanese Mrs. Partington attempts "to drive away 

a fog with a fan." 

An allusion to the once universal vendetta, or personal 
revenge, is contained in " When you curse look out for 

two graves." ^, ' 

The sweetness of contentment and the wide hat I have 
already described give rise to " Live under your hat." 

A democratic growl is now heard in " The voice of the 
crane is louder than the chirping of sparrows." 

Aristocratic ignorance is sneered at in "The tree that 

vice grows on." 

A fool is asked " Can you boil potatoes ? " 

Beni, or vermilion, is greatly used by the ladies to 



290 Nine Years i7t Nipon. 

redden their lips, hence "Who fingers rouge becomes 
red." 

Of the dead, with us, nothing but good must be spoken. 
In Japan, where the tiger is, of course, known only as a 
rare foreign animal, the expression of a similar kindly 
feeling is " Spare the skin of the dead tiger." 

The system of irrigating the rice-fields by cross ditches 
at successively lower and lower levels leads to " Taking 
the water away from your neighbour's field." 

That domestic felicity is sometimes interrupted even in 
Japan is illustrated in " A three-inch tongue can kill a 
six-foot man." 

The following require no elaborate commentary to ex- 
plain them : — 

"The borrower smiles like a saint, and the repayer 
scowls like Old Nick." 

" Even monkeys fall from the tree." 

" The frog in the well knows nothing of the high seas." 

" A tiger in the streets." 

" The bad artist blames his brush." 

" Frog spawn becomes frogs." 

*' Egg-plants do not spring from melon-seeds." 

" Don't seek fish on trees." 

" There's no escaping the net of Providence." 

" Blind men fear not snakes." 

" To draw tears from the very devil." 

" Making an idol does not give it a soul." 

" A good preacher gives a short sermon." 

" There is no professor of poetry." 

" Every one has his wen." 

'' As much esteemed as the bat in the birdless village." 



General Survey 



291 




CHAPTER XXV. 



General Survey : What I Think of Japan. 

Growth of Population— Promise of Improved Physique— " Bafe " Tea 
and Blankets— A Reasonable People— Over-Legislation about Shipping 
—Usurpation of the Shoguns— Growth of the Daimiates— Questionings 
— Japanese Whigs and Tories— Dread of Socialism— The Clan Unit — 
Moral Progress — Revisal of Treaties. 

INCE returning to England I have very often 
been asked in this country — what do you think 
of Japan? The question has been put with 
such varying motives, and by so many different 
classes of people, that I now find it exceedingly 
difficult to attempt any answer at all. How- 
ever, I shall put down here, fairly and 
reasonably I trust, some conclusions to which 
I have come, not altogether hastily and 
without thought. 
Japan, with its thirty-seven millions, must soon be- 
come a most important factor in the history of the East. 
Infanticide and other causes have long kept down the 
natural growth of population. Those causes are now 
ceasing to act to an appreciable extent, and so I think 
the growth of population in Japan will now be rapid. 
The physical stamina of the people will also speedily 




292 Nine Years in Nipon. 

improve. Smallpox has been almost completely stamped 
out. Cholera is understood now by the authorities, and 
has been coped with pretty efficiently. Chest diseases 
are being better guarded against. The Japanese have 
always been given to cleanliness under peculiarly in- 
effective conditions. The genuine principles of '^nedical 
cleanliness are being studied and followed now amongst 
the better classes. Buddhism has long restricted the diet 
of the people to vegetables, — fish and wine being winked 
at, — but that system has no longer a strong hold upon the 
intelligence of the community. Milk is now greatly 
appreciated everywhere for sick people and children. 
Beef is becoming a common article of food, and " Bafe " 
tea is an article known and appreciated in all households 
throughout the treaty ports and larger towns. Cod-liver 
oil is manufactured and consumed in large quantities. 
Woollen clothes — shirts, comforters and blankets — are 
now considered even by conservative people to be useful 
in warding off chest complaints which are common and 
fatal in the country. The empire is now peaceful, and 
the majesty of law is rapidly replacing the bloody 
principle of the vendetta. Recreation and physical 
exercise are more insisted upon for school children, and 
there is the same movement as in our country to throw 
open parks and gardens to the poorer classes of the 
community. The railway and steamer routes are being 
used for pleasure trips as well as for business, and an 
unexpected source of revenue has thus been opened up 
which may yet be augmented a hundred-fold. All these 
influences strongly tend to make the population healthier 
and more numerous. There is sufficient waste land 



Gen,eral Survey. 293 

within the empire to supply the wants of " colonists," as 
those who enter uncultivated territory are called. The 
Island of Yesso is being rapidly colonised in this way, and 
it may supply the desire for openings to young men of 
enterprise for a decade or two to come ; but soon the time 
must arrive when, under the new conditions of her higher 
life, Japan must expand her influence and assert herself 
be)/ond her present narrow bounds. 

Going back even to Xavier's time the Japanese were 
declared by one of themselves, very correctly, to be a 
reasonable people. They have ever been ready, at all 
events, to respond appreciatively to influences of a healthy 
and useful tendency. From China, India, Portugal, 
France, Holland, America and England, successive waves 
have borne in upon their shores germs of thought which 
have taken natural root in the soil, and promise to become 
indigenous. It was from a not unreasonable dread of the 
mysterious and deadly influence of Rome that the country 
was so long and closely sealed against foreign intrusion. 
Even the ships of so daring a race of navigators had then, 
by legal enactment, to be so built that they could hardly 
risk heavy seas, and it was almost superfluously made a 
capital crime for any one to leave the shores of Japan in 
one of them for a foreign country. Feudalism and a 
fertile soil made such regulations possible, and in result 
they were quite effective. 

With a rapidly growing and more heterogeneous 
population, with a totally cultivated or even less fertile 
soil, the problem would not have been so simply solved. 
Japanese patriotism — the Yamato-damashi or Soul of Old 
Japan — has ever been keen ; the danger to the State from 



^94 Nine Years in Nipon. 

the threatened ascendancy of a foreign political hierarchy 
was real and immanent, and when the word had been 
given of a powerful and cruel military autocrat whose will 
was not above law, for no true law existed, the people had 
little to say. Had Cromwell succeeded in establishing 
a hereditary dynasty of military autocrats, it is hard to 
say what might have been the next chapters in English 
history, but Cromwell's soldiers had the Bible— the Old 
Testament at anyrate— in their bosoms, but in Japan 
there was no Bible nor any very feasible substitute for it, 
and so wrong triumphed through the danger of a worse 
wrong. 

It must not, however, be supposed that from the middle 
of the seventeenth century, when Japan became sealed by 
the great Shogun or Generalissimo lyeyasu against all 
foreign intercourse (save with China), till 1868, that abso- 
lute stagnation of thought reigned amongst the thirty odd 
millions of the "black-haired." Admitting, as we must 
meanwhile practically do, their ethnic homogeneity, there 
were already in the land and in its literature, systems- 
Aryan, Turanian,— and shall I even venture to say Sem- 
itic?*— which could hardly fail to have various fertilising 
interactions in the seething process of social evolution 
which we now begin to see, somewhat dimly only as yet, 
to have been going on in the long dreary interval of dark- 
ness and silence. 

There was, first of all, an ominously silent and 



The Nestonans may just possibly, through China, have influenced the 
leading modern Buddhist sect of Monto. It is indeed somewhat hard to get 
nd o . pr^or^ grounds for some such influence, which is also-speaking from 
a historical standpoint-quite within the range of possibility 



General Survey. 295 

stealthy but gradually significant questioning in liter- 
ary circles as to the usurped authority by which the 
act of isolation had been decreed, while it is not 
clearly evident that at first the great common sense 
of the country at large dissented from the severe 
measures taken to secure the validity of the decree 
itself There seems indeed to have been a wide-spread 
conviction amongst the intelligent portion of the popula- 
tion not converted to mediaeval Christianity, that however 
hard it might be in detail for individuals, the safety of the 
state demanded the immediate and vigorous exercise of 
capable authority. 

There followed, by gradual stages and at long intervals, 
the decline of the hereditary shogunate, and the simul- 
taneous growth in wealth and influence of the great clan 
chieftains or daimios {dai-mio = grQdit name). Often the 
power of the daimio really lay in the hands of some 
shrewd retainer of even the humblest rank, who had 
mastered the subtle oriental arts of secret wire-pulling 
and the caucus. The Cabinet of the present Mikado after 
the Restoration was very largely composed of able but 
plain men, who had made an entrance into the mysteries 
of statecraft in this humble and informal way. 

By-and-by arose a disposition cautiously to question 
publicly the wisdom and finality of the act itself The 
wide world outside was always sending in through some 
newly-discovered chink a ray of knowledge that was felt 
to be only good for man. 

Nor were there wanting now and again adventurers 
who would risk even life itself for one sweet bite of the 
forbidden fruit. The light at last dawned, and when the 



296 



Nine Years in Nipon. 



■"Black Ships" first came, the people were really far better 
prepared to welcome them than we have been wont to 
suppose. The Shogun's party then began to move, and, 
of course, the Mikado's party then asserted itself as essen- 
tially conservative. The conservative cause, too, included 
the rowdy military element, in which the masterless two- 
sworded men or ronins played a bloody and conspicuous 
part. They were ready at least to lay their lives down 
voluntarily rather than see Japan stained by the footsteps 
of barbarians. 




Whig and Tory. 
(From a Japanese ''^Dialogue on Political Economy." ) 



New blood was infused into the old veins of the politi- 
cal organism. Men of the people, as we have seen, made 
themselves felt, and the progressionists who sided with 
the Shogun were outbid in Radicalism by those who 



General Survey. 297 

" ran " the boy Mikado into power once more — power that 
was now to be formally supreme, and almost as much 
that of the people themselves — although this is hardly 
visible yet, as is the authority of the United States 
President. The preparedness of the people is apparent 
from the suddenness of the change. Such a transforma- 
tion may seem easy and natural to those who derive 
their notions of Oriental history from the translations 
of the Arabian Nights; but in Japan, as, I believe, every- 
where else, such free movements are effected by measurable 
dynamic influences which the patient historian may hope 
yet to analyze and record. 

But what of the large and ferocious party who had for 
years made the fertile plains and valleys of Japan ring 
with the sound, " Expel the barbarians ! " Their con- 
version was very easily effected. It was clear that razor- 
like blades were no match for bomb-shells, bayonets, and 
rifle bullets. If they were ever to fight the barbarians it 
must be by patiently learning their arts and purchasing 
or making their weapons. This suggestion when made 
was heartily resolved upon. Arsenals were founded, 
steamers were bought, and professors were engaged to 
teach every science known in the West, and a great deal 
more that was not science at all. For many years the 
original purpose was doggedly maintained, but happily 
broader and more liberal views now prevail. The reign 
of the present Emperor restores the spirit of toleration 
that prevailed in ancient times. It is said that the peace- 
ful direct reign of the Mikados of Japan has never been 
stained by an act of religious persecution, and the state- 
ment is almost literally true. 

T 



298 Nine Years in Nipon, 

The London Times in 1859 predicted that "the 
Chinaman would still be navigating the canals of 
his country in the crazy old junks of his ancestors, 
when the Japanese was skimming along his rivers 
in high-pressure steamers, or flying across the country 
behind a locomotive." The railway is now, in fact^ 
stretching its iron tracks across hill and dale ; the 
telegraph is spreading her web all over the country ; 
tramway cars are to run on the quieter roads as they now 
do in the large cities ; the printing press is heard rattling 
merrily in every moderate sized county town, and the 
Japanese, who have always read much, now read ten 
times more than ever they did before. Technical educa- 
tion, of that higher kind which no system of schools or 
colleges can quite accomplish, is telling upon the people, 
and many works are now undertaken from which the 
authorities would have shrunk a year or two ago as being 
impossible for them to grapple with. The roads are still 
far behind what the Empire needs, but there is enough of 
criticism going on to give us the hope that they willsoon 
be mended. A Japanese newspaper says that " our 
Government differs from that of other countries in this — 
that the Government itself leads the van of progress." 
Of course this can hardly be true of any government, and 
is essentially untrue of Japan. No step has been taken 
forward without the most strenuous popular discussion, 
which in Japan unfortunately has hitherto always threat- 
ened to end in civil war. 

Far back in history there are traces to be found of the 
now more familiar tokii-sei — equality of condition, or 
socialism. The authorities know well that Christianity 



General Survey. 299 

is at present the one efifective restraint upon the growth 
of this dangerous social heresy, the genuine counterpart 
of which it professes to expound. The teachings of 
scientific atheism, which have been attentively weighed, 
are therefore not greatly in favour at present, on account 
of their supposed tendency in the direction of levelling 
all social and traditional distinctions. Possibly it might 
be shown that genuine science has done much to accent 
the very opposite doctrine of special fitnesses in nature 
for lower or higher functions. Apart from this question, 
the influence of the modern scientific spirit is immense, 
and ever growing. Photography corrects the bad draw- 
ing and false perspective of an art from which we have 
yet much to learn. The telegraph post with its caps and 
wires is now a conventional subject in decorative work. 
The social influence of the railway is very extensive. 

The late able minister from Japan to St. James's — Mori 
Arinori — is reported by an interviewer of the Pall Mall 
Gazette to have marked the absence in our country of 
that " sense of brotherhood which binds together all the 
members of one family, and which extends from them to 
all dwellers in one district," and which, I may add, keeps 
the number of paupers in Japan down to a very low 
figure. It may perhaps be that this blood and local tie 
does not imply that a very high stage of civilization has 
yet been attained in Japan, but it seems to be an admirable 
basis for the growth of larger and more complex social 
aggregates, and it works fairly well in Japan, tending, 
however, somewhat to hinder individual progress and 
aggrandisement, perhaps too much to be altogether for 
the good of the State, 



300 Nine Years in Nipon. 

Miss Bird has stated seriously {Unbeaten Tracks^ 
Vol. II., 347) that— 

" The nation is sunk in immorality, the millstone of 
Orientality hangs round her neck in the race in which she 
has started, and her progress is political and intellectual 
rather than moral ; in other words, as regards the highest 
destiny of man, individually or collectively, it is at present 
a failure." 

Now this seems to me, after nine years of daily and 
most intimate intercourse with all classes except the very 
highest to be an extremely harsh and erroneous judgment. 
The recent intellectual progress of the Japanese people 
has been very striking, though not as yet so general as 
many have supposed ; its political progress has perhaps 
been unprecedented ; but I think that on the whole the 
moral elevation of the mass of the people within the last 
decade has been still more striking and noteworthy. The 
judges will not now I am sure accept a bribe any more 
than an English magistrate would do ; obscene images 
and pictures are rarely to be seen in public — unless im- 
ported from Christian countries, — and the women are far 
more modest in their clothing and outward demeanour 
than they were a few years ago. I speak what I know to 
be the opinion of enlightened natives when I say this, but 
an appeal to the daily newspapers would show the exis- 
tence of a higher tone in the political and national life — a 
nobler sense of honour, a truer, kindlier regard to the 
rights and wishes of others in the hard struggle for exis- 
tence. Truly there is a vast amount of impurity and evil 
to deplore, but there is more of it on the surface, and 



General Survey. 301 

therefore visible to every passing tourist, than is found to 
be the case in other eastern countries. 

Confucius does not speak to the times we live in, as 
even an infidel or pagan Japanese editor feels that Christ 
does. Buddhism, with its lofty asceticism that can promise 
no reward, has forgotten its old clear cold message, and 
indeed has almost reversed it all. Christianity, bathed in 
blood and charred to very dust, has sublimely risen out of 
the long cold embers, and speaks to the land in a voice 
which every one now listens to with some trace of respect 
and admiration. Through its translated Scriptures, its 
pure literature, its vernacular and higher schools, its 
stimulating lectures and sermons, and its medical missions, 
it has done much directly, — it has done very much more 
indirectly, — to leaven public opinion with lofty and manly 
sentiment. 

The mere contiguity also of a higher civilization has 
tended to raise and purify the people, and to justify and 
emphasize what is best and noblest in the teaching of old 
systems long and deeply rooted in the country. 

The Japanese Government, echoing the unanimous 
voice of their people, have been agitating for a relaxation 
of the terms of our treaty made in 1858. At present the 
British subject living on Japanese soil is under what are 
piously supposed to be the laws of his own country. 
As a matter of fact these laws can be made and unmade 
pretty much at the discretion of a British minister under 
strange powers conferred on him by an Act in Council. 
The foreigner cannot go into the interior without a pass- 
port binding him down not to trade in the country, and 
his reasons for going must be either pursuit of health or 



302 Nine Years in Nipon. 

scientific research. His rights of residence without a 
passport are limited to the treaty ports and a very narrow 
radius around each of them. If he offend, he must be 
tried before one of his own officials. 

The system does not work well; but what of that 
which it is now proposed to substitute for it ? It is 
not long since photographs were on view, taken from 
life, of a poor crucified native criminal being tortured 
to death by spearing. Other forms of torture of 
a hideous kind have but recently been abolished, and 
very naturally enlightened foreigners who are warmly 
in sympathy with Japan urge caution in placing ourselves 
under a system of jurisprudence of such sudden growth. 
A great deal is said about torture in this connection. I 
have seen in my ordinary practice several of its results, 
but I have never seen a recent case, nor have I even 
heard of any well-authenticated one within the last six 
years. But for my part, I think that while this dread may 
now be ignored, it would be more satisfactory to secure 
some better guarantees that foreign interests will not be 
interfered with in a multitude of petty ways. This fear 
is the true nightmare that broods over every foreigner 
who contemplates residence in Japan under native juris- 
prudence. It may only be a nightmare, but its existence 
must be taken into account by any one who discusses the 
subject gravely. 

The subject has very recently assumed a novel 
aspect. It has been urged with effect, that till Japan 
becomes a Christian country, Western countries will not 
consent to submit their citizens to her jurisdiction. In 
nature there arc curious laws of organic life which tend to 



General Survey. 303 

perpetuate struggling species. One of them, first enun- 
ciated by the distinguished naturalist, Mr. Bates, is that of 
" Protective Mimicry." A great Japanese educationalist, 
who has deserved well of his countrymen for his patriotic 
services, and who has been one of the most popular ex- 
ponents of Spencerian agnosticism, catching -up the phrase 
with his usual keen, practical intelligence, proposes to 
utilise the conception by advocating a " Protective Mimi- 
cry" of Christianity. The proposal is, of course, quite 
suicidal, though I believe well meant, and by no means so 
cynical as it may seem, and is not ill-calculated to fall in 
with the prevailing cultured eclecticism, which is not an 
entirely new feature in the national geist of Nipon. The 
march of men, we trust, is ever onward, and as we have 
already seen the " Protective Mimicry " of Western arts 
of warfare end happily in a large development of the arts 
of peace, so it may not be altogether vain to hope that 
a false and faltering step in the right direction may 
ultimately lead to genuine and germinal reform. 

As I write these closing sentences, the announcement 
reaches me that while the official priesthood — both Shinto 
and Buddhist — is being finally abolished, the peerage is 
being re-erected with greater lustre than before. It is 
now clear to most moderate Japanese that such a regulator 
will be needed in the promised National Constitution of 
1 890 as a partially hereditary House of Lords will afford. 
Not a few strong and enlightened democrats in Japan are 
of opinion that a true democracy alone possesses the 
guarantee of good manners and fair intellectual discus- 
sion. May the people of Nipon and their enlightened 
and progressive ruler long continue to advance, true to 



304 



Nine Years in Nipon. 



the glorious symbol of the Rising Sun which blushes so 
hopefully on their standard. 




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